You are absolutely right, that's the more in depth explanation as to why it's not just an overly complicated markov chain. At the same time, "meaning" here is

You are absolutely right, that's the more in depth explanation as to why it's not just an overly complicated markov chain. At the same time, "meaning" here is essentially "close together in a big hyperdimensional space". It's meaning in the same way youtube recommendations are conceptually related by probability. And yet, the output is nothing short of incredible for something so blunt in how it functions, much like our brains I suppose. I'm a die-hard classical AI fan though, I like knowing the rules and that the results are provably optimal and that if I ask for a different result I can actually get a truly meaningfully different output. Not nearly as convenient as a chat bot of course, and unfortunately ChatGPT is abysmal at generating constraint problems. Maybe one day we'll get a best of both worlds.