Saying that LLMs are stochastic machines does not establish an upper bound for success.
However, as the science improves, we understand more and more that brain is just part of a much bigger network, and its size or surface roughness might not be the only thing determines the level of intelligence.
Also, all living things have processes which allows constant input from their surroundings and they also have closed feedback loops which constantly change and tweak things. Call these hormones, emotions or self-reflection or whatnot.
We the scientists love to play god with the information we have at hand, yet we constantly humbled by the nature by experiencing the shallowness of what we know. Because of that I, as a CS Ph.D., am not so keen on to jump to that bandwagon which claims that we invented silicon brains.
They are arguably useful automatons built on dubious data obtained in ethical gray areas. We're just starting to see what we did, and we have a long way to go.
So, a living parrot might be more intelligent than these stochastic parrots. I'll stay on the cautious critics wagon for now.
Or the other way around.