> Does this mean that in the course of their academic training and scientific research, this researcher is being trained to be like an ant?

If they act out these predictions and are rewarded based on their accuracy, then yes. They're being trained to be like ants. Not entirely like ants in every way, but like them in specific ways.

There's a big difference with your analogy. Predicting tokens is essentially the same as generating tokens. There's no meaningful objective difference between the activities (I'm ignoring philosophy and focusing on observables). They both lead to a stream of tokens.

For contrast, consider any sport, maybe baseball. I could predict the winner of a game but not be able to win it myself. I could predict the next pitch but not be able throw it or hit it. There's an execution aspect you can fail at. Being like an ant would also have this aspect. Token prediction doesn't have this, or if it does (maybe turning a vector into an API response?) it's a trivial part of the whole problem.

Maybe I'd be more clear to say "write like humans" instead of "be like humans", though.