LLMs are the first instance of us having created some sort of general AI. I don't mean AGI, but general AI as in not specific AI. Before LLMs the problem eith AI was always that it "can only do one thing well". Now we have something on the other side: AI that can do anything but nothing specific particularly well. This is a fundamental advancement which makes AGI actually imaginable. Before LLMs there was literally no realistic plan how to build general intelligence.
Smart enough to make weapons, tame dogs, start fires and cultivate plants. Humans managed to do that even when most of their time was spent gathering food or starving.
Nobody cares about making an AI with basic human survival skills. We could probably have a certified genius level AI that still couldn't do any of that because it lacks a meaningful physical body.
If we wanted to make that the goal instead of actual meaningful contributions to human society, we could probably achieve it, and it would be a big waste of time imo.
