We know more than you might realize

The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe. We are only scratching the surface of it right now. Discussions of consciousness and sentience are more a domain of philosophy than anything else. The true innovations in AI will come from neurologists and biologists, not from computer scientists or mathematicians.

It’s nice that you mentioned quantum effects, since the NN models all require a certain degree of randomness (“temperature”) to return the best results.

Quantum effects are not randomness. Emulating quantum effects is possible, they can be understood empirically, but it is very slow. If intelligence relies on quantum effects, then we will need to build whole new types of quantum computers to build AI.

the results speak for themselves.

Well, there we agree. In that the results are very limited I suppose that they do speak for themselves 😛

We have a new tool: LLMs. They are the glue needed to bring all the siloed AIs together, a radical change just like that from air flight to spaceflight.

This is what I mean by exaggeration. I'm an AI proponent, I want to see the field succeed. But this is nothing like the leap forward some people seem to think it is. It's a neat trick with some interesting if limited applications. It is not an AI. This is no different than when Minsky believed that by the end of the 70s we would have "a machine with the general intelligence of an average human being", which is exactly the sort of over-promising that led to the AI field having a terrible reputation and all the funding drying up.