Even if you could understand human cognition to the level required to say, confidently, that it’s done one word at a time, it’s likely not! Natural language is not a prerequisite for human intelligence, as evidenced by the fact that we went from primates to commenting on HN.
Natural language is, however, a prerequisite for the existence of LLMs. It’s more similar to methods for storing and retrieving information, like the printing press or a database, than it is to a sentient being.
That’s not to say that LLMs can’t do crazy things, because they already have. Our language can encode a whole lot of information, and it’s incredible that we’ve found a way to distill that so effectively.
