I believe text is their only reliable way to update the model's internal state in a way that reliably transfers information. (Its internal state is a black box

I believe text is their only reliable way to update the model's internal state in a way that reliably transfers information. (Its internal state is a black box.) I presume they feed in the prompt and dump internal state to disk, rather than feeding the initial prompt through each session, if that's what you're asking. What alternative method would you imagine they would use to reliably manipulate the model's internal black box state?