> Categories of _what_, exactly?

Precisely. At least apples and oranges are both fruits, and it makes sense to compare e.g. the sugar contents of each. But an LLM model and the human brain are as different as the wind and the sunshine. You cannot measure the windspeed of the sun and you cannot measure the UV index of the wind.

Your choice of the words here was rather poor in my opinion. Statistical models do not have cognition any more than the wind has ultra-violet radiation. Cognition is a well studied phenomena, there is a whole field of science dedicated to cognition. And while cognition of animals are often modeled using statistics, statistical models in them selves do not have cognition.

A much better word here would by “abilities”. That is that these tests demonstrate the different abilities of LLM models compared to human abilities (or even the abilities of traditional [specialized] models which often do pass these kinds of tests).

Semantics often do matter, and what worries me is that these statistical models are being anthropomorphized way more then is healthy. People treat them like the crew of the Enterprise treated Data, when in fact they should be treated like the ship‘s computer. And I think this because of a deliberate (and malicious/consumer hostile) marketing campaign from the AI companies.