Sure it does, tool use is huge for actually using this tech to be useful for humans. Which openai and Google seem to have little interest in

Most of the core latest generation models have been focused on this, you can tell them what they have access to and how to use it, the one I have running at home (running on my too old for windows 11 mid-range gaming computer) can search the Web, ingest data into a vector database, and I'm working on a multi-turn system so they can handle more complex tasks with a mix of code and layers of llm evaluation. There's projects out there that give them control of a system or build entire apps on the spot

You can give them direct access to the terminal if you want to... It's very easy, but they're probably just going to trash the system without detailed external guidance

One of the biggest areas of ongoing research is about incorporating data from outside systems, like databases, specialized models, and, other specialized tools (which are not AI based themselves). And, yes, modern models can do this to various extents already. What the fuck are you even talking about.