Am I off base to view this as a strong hint AGI won't arrive through mere LLMs?
Who uses just LLM these days!?
We use harnesses. Practically useful AI is a system of pieces already. It hasn't been pure LLM since ChatGPT 3.5 release.
Probably not.
LLMs might be a step towards AGI (assuming that's possible) but the prevailing belief that LLMs and human brains (the latter being the most complex structures in the universe that we know of) are already functionally equivalent in every way that matters seems more like an article of faith to me than fact.
There have been strong hints since the 60s.
First you'd have to come up with a commonly accepted definition. By some ~16 years old definitions from famous experts in the field, we've already achieved it. By today's definition (of the same expert) we haven't. There are people today that think we have it. There are people today that think we'll never have it. It's such a loaded term / topic.
Also, regarding LLMs, 2 years ago another famous expert in the field was adamant that LLMs can't plan, can't do math and they can't work at long contexts. Obviously they can do all of that now. So, really, no one knows.