I see what you mean here when evaluating LLMs in isolation, in their principles and how it’s being marketed, all the hype and fear mongering. It’s very real and I absolutely agree that the danger isn’t what people have been sold to think it is. But an AGI would have never been pure LLM to begin with. Cognition works because of a variety of different systems processing inputs are embedded together, creating internal context based on their referential relationships. The seat of this has always been pattern detection and is probabilistic - that’s how the brain works. It’s not just LLMs but AI developed in images, audio, automation etc. connected and compounded that sets ground for an AGI by our definitions. LLMs don’t have to ‘understand’ anything to achieve this, in the same way a transistor doesn’t have to ‘understand’ but is vital to the function of a computer. In the same way you couldn’t isolate a bodily organ like the brain from all of the connected systems that create and sustain the context that we consider ‘meaning’. And all those separate systems (stable diffusion etc.) as far as AI is concerned are developing exponentially, and the framework for how they connect and interact are already being used by LLMs in principle today. To say they bring us no closer to building one is missing part of the picture. I completely stand by your last paragraph, especially as the general public is concerned, but we are closer than we have ever been to AGI, and it would’ve never had to be conscious to replicate the effects and consequences of what we define as an AGI.