I think it's pretty analogous to coding, honestly. When it comes to gaining true understanding of a piece of software, I still find today's models almost as useless as they were a year ago.

They can write great code, they can gain understanding of something for themselves, but they still kinda suck at explaining it to people. As the article says, if you want understanding, it seems like there is no replacement for getting in the weeds yourself. A model can help, but it's not going to magically download knowledge into your brain.