A lot of words to say that for all intents and purposes... it's nondeterministic.

> Yes, it's a departure from the fully deterministic systems we're used to.

A system either produces the same output given the same input[1], or doesn't.

LLMs are nondeterministic by design. Sure, you can configure them with a zero temperature, a static seed, and so on, but they're of no use to anyone in that configuration. The nondeterminism is what gives them the illusion of "creativity", and other useful properties.

Classical computers, compilers, and programming languages are deterministic by design, even if they do contain complex logic that may affect their output in unpredictable ways. There's a world of difference.

[1]: Barring misbehavior due to malfunction, corruption or freak events of nature (cosmic rays, etc.).