In my most recent podcast, machine learning researcher Léon Bottou argues that LLMs are essentially fiction machines that can be remarkably good at conversing about new situations that are far removed from their training data. Indeed, what I find impressive is how often LLMs are truthful and correct, considering that they are not designed to be so. One reason for this could be the intensive reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) from the armies of human validators employed by operators of LLMs that fine-tune their responses to be correct or socially acceptable.