Well I don't see the problem, AI can't explain itself but it's nothing more than matrix multiplication with a nonlinearity. Maybe you use a Fourier transform and a kernel instead of scalar weights for a convolutional neural network, maybe it has state instead of being purely feed forward, but at the core of it all you're doing is multiplying matrices and applying a nonlinearity. I don't know what you mean that we don't know how it generates images and text. It's literally just doing the thing it was programmed to do?

What research? I'd like to see some evidence that these models "think," given that the way every LLM I know of works is by generating a single word at a time. When you ask a GPT how to bake bread, and the first word it outputs is "Surely!" it has no clue what explanation it'll start giving you. In fact, whether or not it chooses the exact word "Surely!" as the start of the response has a cascading response on the rest of the output. Then, as I had said earlier, LLMs don't see anything more than the statistical correlations between words. No LLM knows what gravity is, but when you ask it why things fall down it has enough physics textbooks in its training data that it can parrot the answer from there.

One of the ways I really broke down the idea that GPTs have any model of thought is playing this game. If AI had any actual model of meaning, it would understand security and it would understand not to just tell the player the password. Instead, it will literally blurt it out if you do as much as ask it for words that rhyme. You don't even need to mention "password," the way GPT works means that if it detects a lot of weight on a certain word in its previous prompt (which naturally would've emphasized the password), it's almost guaranteed to bring it up again. I know it's not exactly a hard proof, but it is fun.

As for your last question you're out of luck because I'm actually just a Catholic lol, not a lot more to say than I believe that there is a metaphysical nature to human experience connecting us to a soul. But that's a completely unscientific belief to be honest, and it's not a point I can argue because it's not based on evidence.