Based on the evidence, I think I’m a bit more of a simpleton who puts in a good effort at the start but loses steam partway through. I guess thanks for the support though.

“Correlates”? As in: “It gives you the answer it best correlates with your prompts/context.” Feels somewhat right both in the sense of AI as tensor-based word-select autocomplete and as a “lower-level” process than genuine thought, one which turns incongruent inputs (“I’m an AI” and “I just deleted prod+backup”) into meaningless output (“The AI is sorry”) that might look OK at a distance.