Am I off base to view this as a strong hint AGI won't arrive through mere LLMs?
Also, regarding LLMs, 2 years ago another famous expert in the field was adamant that LLMs can't plan, can't do math and they can't work at long contexts. Obviously they can do all of that now. So, really, no one knows.
We use harnesses. Practically useful AI is a system of pieces already. It hasn't been pure LLM since ChatGPT 3.5 release.
LLMs might be a step towards AGI (assuming that's possible) but the prevailing belief that LLMs and human brains (the latter being the most complex structures in the universe that we know of) are already functionally equivalent in every way that matters seems more like an article of faith to me than fact.