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Was there a particular change to the network or the way that it was trained that introduced the 'backtrack and error correct' mechanism?

Does that take anything away from the argument?

What argument, "a theory was wrong"? No, the inane central observation, the observation that a researcher was unable to predict a discovery before it was discovered, remains true despite the gratuitous insertion of a little bit of bullshit about AI learning.

I suppose it's additionally trying to imply something else, like "due to a pattern of researchers being unable to discover discoveries before they discover them, AGI is just around the corner".

its one thing to say "we dont know"

it's a different thing to say "it's mathematically impossible"

so if it turns out it is possible, what then? was math broken? or the researcher an idiot who either doesnt know math, or is just bullshitting non-existing proofs?

Mathematics doesn't tell you what is necessarily true. It consists of guessing about what is necessarily true.

(I don't know the details of what happened, it could be either or neither of the things you said.)

do you have a problem with this field of research being called "machine learning"?