Comment by Terr_

"I knew the dame was trouble the moment she walked into my office."

"Uh... excuse me, Detective Nick Danger? I'd like to retain your services."

"I waited for her to get the the point."

"Detective, who are you talking to?"

"I didn't want to deal with a client that was hearing voices, but money was tight and the rent was due. I pondered my next move."

"Mr. Danger, are you... narrating out loud?"

"Damn! My internal chain of thought, the key to my success--or at least, past successes--was leaking again. I rummaged for the familiar bottle of scotch in the drawer, kept for just such an occasion."

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But seriously: These "AI" products basically run on movie-scripts already, where the LLM is used to append more "fitting" content, and glue-code is periodically performing any lines or actions that arise in connection to the Helpful Bot character. Real humans are tricked into thinking the finger-puppet is a discrete entity.

These new "reasoning" models are just switching the style of the movie script to film noir, where the Helpful Bot character is making a layer of unvoiced commentary. While it may make the story more cohesive, it isn't a qualitative change in the kind of illusory "thinking" going on.