The Term “Non-Deterministic” and LLMs

I have recently found myself using the term “non-deterministic” to describe LLM behavior. However, something feels off about using that term and I’m nearly convinced that not only is it (sometimes) incorrect, it is imprecise, as it leaves unexplained a critical charactericistic of LLM behavior that makes LLMs different from deterministic functions. First, defining “deterministic algorithm”…