The weather isn’t magic either. It’s produced by physical mechanisms. But everyone would probably agree that a model simulating some rough aggregate of those me

The weather isn’t magic either. It’s produced by physical mechanisms. But everyone would probably agree that a model simulating some rough aggregate of those mechanisms isn’t “weather” itself. On the other hand. Take that weather model and render its output into a stereoscopic 3D world with photorealistic particle systems and whatever. To someone wearing a Vision Pro or similar high-def VR headset, the model is now “the weather” in the system their senses occupy. It’s missing a lot of actual sensory cues — the rain isn’t wet, the wind won’t chill your skin, and so on. But it’s close enough for some convincing applications. A caveman with no experience with technology would undoubtedly believe himself transported into a different world with real weather. LLMs are a bit like that now. Their simulation abilities took such a sudden leap, we’re like cavemen wearing headsets.