Understanding how transformers work does not mean understanding how they compose into the capabilities we observe. The former is concretely understood. The latter is an active area of research where no, we (in general, including you) do not understand how they work.
What capabilities? Regurgitating a collage of training data? Again it's pretty easy to understand why this happens. The "magic" you are perceiving is language itself not these models. Language is a constantly evolving tool and we constantly imbue it with our collective knowledge.
The "capabilities you observe" are the actual psychological phenomena at hand here. There's zero chance that branch of research will meaningfully improve the output. That's simply not the point.
This isn't people merely annoyed with repetition. This is the majority of people realizing the limitations of LLMs. Why would researchers give a flying crap about the ignorance of the business world and the public?
The research goals were and still are clearly distinct from the business goals.