But we do. A series of mathematical functions are applied to predict the next tokens. It’s not magic although it seems like it is. People are acting like it’s the dark ages and Merlin made a rabbit disappear in a hat.
Do we understand the emergent properties of almost-intelligence they appear to present, and what that means about them and us, etc. etc.?
No.
And it happens to do something weirdly useful to our own minds based on the values in the registers.
There's no magic here. Most of people's awestruck reactions are due to our brain's own pattern recognition abilities and our association of language use with intelligence. But there's really no intelligence here at all, just like the "face on Mars" is just a random feature of a desert planet's landscape, not an intelligent life form.