I feel like this sort of misses the point. I didn't think the primary thrust of his article was so much about the specific details of AI, or what kind of tasks AI can now surpass humans on. I think it was more of a general analysis (and very well written IMO) that even when new technologies advance in a slow, linear progression, the point at which they overtake an earlier technology (or "horses" in this case), happens very quickly - it's the tipping point at which the old tech surpasses the new. For some reason I thought of Hemingway's old adage "How did you go bankrupt? - Slowly at first, then all at once."

I agree with all the limitations you've written about the current state of AI and LLMs. But the fact is that the tech behind AI and LLMs never really gets worse. I also agree that just scaling and more compute will probably be a dead end, but that doesn't mean that I don't think that progress will still happen even when/if those barriers are broadly realized.

Unless you really believe human brains have some sort of "secret special sauce" (and, FWIW, I think it's possible - the ability of consciousness/sentience to arise from "dumb matter" is something that I don't think scientists have adequately explained or even really theorized), the steady progress of AI should, eventually, surpass human capabilities, and when it does, it will happen "all at once".