They are definitely doing more than parroting. When learning mathematics, it's not uncommon to have some little misunderstanding that just isn't covered by a wr

They are definitely doing more than parroting. When learning mathematics, it's not uncommon to have some little misunderstanding that just isn't covered by a written explanation because it's "obvious" unless you happen to have misunderstood it that particular way. When that happens, you could look up the topic in 5 books on the subject and not make progress (never mind that you have to search through them to get to roughly the right point). LLMs are genuinely good at challenges like this - they make mistakes, but they can still identify and correct your misunderstanding with a bit of back and forth. A good human on the subject will do better, and I'm not claiming the LLM has "understanding" in any philosophical sense. But it's more useful than something that just regurgitates material.