As you say, whether we call it "AI", or "doohickey", it is an incredible innovation. And I don't think that anyone is claiming at the moment that the systems as-is will themselves "go the whole way" - it is a technological advancement, that like all others should inspire practitioners to develop better future systems, that adapt some aspects of it.

Perhaps at some point we will see a self-propelling technological singularity with the AI developing its own successor autonomously, but that's clearly not the current situation.

Doohickey is so much more relatable ... I may call LLM's that from now on. Thank you.

> And I don't think that anyone is claiming at the moment that the systems as-is will themselves "go the whole way"

Dunno but I see plenty of people making exactly this claim every day, even on this site

That will never happen. We may approach that state asymptotically but since AI output is stochastic, and humans' goals change over time, humans will always be part of the loop.