Ive had this chat with engineers too many times. They're used to systems where we know 99% of everything that matters. They don't believe that we only know 0.001% of biology.
There's a certain hubris in many engineers and software developers because we are used to having a lot of control over the systems we work on. It can be intoxicating, but then we assume that applies to other areas of knowledge and study.
ChatGPT is really cool because it offers a new way to fetch data from the body of internet knowledge. It is impressive because it can remix it the knowledge really fast (give X in the style of Y with constraints Z). It functions as StackOverflow without condescending remarks. It can build models of knowledge based on the data set and use it to give interpretations of new knowledge based on that model and may have emergent properties.
It is not yet exploring or experiencing the physical world like humans so that makes it hard to do empirical studies. Maybe one day these systems can, but it not in their current forms.
