> this is probably appropriate for explaining things to 5 year olds.

I feel it's appropriate in terms of simplicity, but I think providing a simple wrong explanation is really only worth it when the more accurate explanation is substantially harder to simplify, and I don't think explaining how GPS works falls into that category.

Something like this I think is more accurate without being any more complex:

> Imagine you are standing outside and you see lots of stars in the sky. Well, GPS works kind of like that, but instead of stars, there are satellites orbiting the Earth. These satellites are way up high, so you can always see some of them.

> When you have a GPS device, like a phone or a car, it can look for these satellites, and if it sees enough of them it can use math to figure out where you are.

I’ll admit it was a decent answer. However, even a somewhat bright person (especially someone with radio / networking experience) could probably have realized that was an issue without any prior knowledge of GPS. They know that their phone has a GPS receiver, and that satellite phones accessing geostationary or high altitude satellites are much bulkier. Clearly, your cell phone isn’t transmitting to each satellite.

How will future LLMs be able to conduct that level of reasoning?

You can just as easily ELI5 this without spreading misinformation, though. Just change the third paragraph to:

> The satellites all broadcast a special code saying where each of them is. When you have a GPS device, like a phone or a car, it can listen to these codes and find out where and how far away different satellites are.

(Actually, this would be a fun thing to do with a class. Have a few kids march around the edges of the playground, saying things like “I’m next to the swingset now!”, and then ask one one kid to close their eyes, put them somewhere in the middle and ask them to guess where they’re standing.)