It is only surprising to those who refuse to understand how LLMs work and continue to anthropomorphise them. There is no being “truthful” here, the model has no concept of right or wrong, true or false. It’s not “lying” to you, it’s spitting out text. It just so happens that sometimes that non-deterministic text aligns with reality, but you don’t really know when and neither does the model.

I don't want my LLM to excel in IMO or codeforces. I want it to understand my significantly easier but complex to state problem, think of solutions, understand its own issues and resolve it, rather than be passive agressive.