archive https://archive.ph/is57b
It doesn’t read on demand
Yes, it does, from the information it was trained on (or - stored), which like you say, requires a lot of hardware power so it can be accessed on demand. It isn’t just manifesting the information out of thin air, and it definitely doesn’t “remember” in the same way we do (E: even the best photographic memory isn’t the same as an indexable one).
It’s definitely not indexed, we use RAG architectures to add indexing to data stores that we want the model to have direct access to, the relevant information is injected directly in the context (prompt). This can somewhat be equated to short term memory
The rest of the information is approximated in the weights of the neural network which gives the model general knowledge and intuition…akin to long term memory
People have such crazy misconceptions about AI. Glad to see someone else knows how it works at least.