In terms of synapse density, neuron diversity, energy efficiency, memory access, etc. they are orders of magnitude lesser.

My mental model - for better or worse - is that intelligence has both shape and area, and LLMs are orders of magnitude smaller area but very different shape, and they have more intelligence area in the kind that humans have lesser of.

So yes very different, more in some material ways and lesser in others, but in total intelligence are still orders of magnitude lesser.

My gp comment was acknowledging that when you scale up many instances / brute force problems it confuses that "total area" claim a bit.

To follow the anthropomorphization... 1000 toddlers may have more total intelligence than a grown man, but does that matter?

The problem with these discussions probably/usually fold into differing/loose definitions of intelligence.