Why do you say they are not capable of reasoning?
But here goes. It's a language model. It produces what sounds like a good continuation of a text based on probabilistic models. While it sounds like human generated content, "it" doesn't actually "think". It doesn't have a culture. It doesn't have thoughts. "It" is a model that generates text that mimics what human whose text it has trained on would have answered. We humans have a tendency to associate that with a sentient thing producing it, but it is not sentient. It is a tree of probabilities with a bit of a randomization on top of it.
Ergo, it cannot reason.
Sentience? Consciousness? Who knows. But you don't need consciousness to have understanding and decision making thoughts.
I don't think this is true. It seems to me that you could do this through sheer statistics, and have no understanding of the world you're talking about at all.
I'm not sure that there is a difference. If there is, what would be an example of true understanding vs just statistics? All of intelligence is ultimately recognizing patterns and layers of patterns of patterns.
"It doesn't have a culture. It doesn't have thoughts"
These are conclusions. What is your reasoning?
To what degree would you say that human decision making can be explained by this statement:
"It is a tree of probabilities with a bit of a randomization on top of it."
What is your reasoning to prove that it has culture and reasoning, that its abilities go beyond mimicking human discourse?