What's the difference between "understanding" and "having really good probabilistic information about how words combine"?

Kids learn to speak by parroting what they hear and observing the outcome. Then they run tests that reinforce the connections between words. That's what the model is.

But humans also get to link words with all the other sense experience we have (like how sweet cherries, loud fire trucks, and that one crayon are all "red"). LLMs don't have as many dimensions of experience they can link to.

But anyway, intelligence is about having an internal model of the world and using it to predict the future. The more rich and accurate the model, the more intelligent. The ability to communicate isn't a prerequisite; lots of animals have intelligence that isn't built with language.

Spot on. That we have internal language models doesn't mean we only have language models as cognition. People seem to be redefining imposter syndrome as reflected by stand alone language models. Makes me think of Tropic Thunder. "Am I even real". Lol get a grip people.