The paper is yet another in a long line of, "humans are special, computers can't replicate them". Such thinking has been a part of the fields for decades and decades, I had arguments about them when I was in college with my professors (such as John Holland, "creator" of genetic algorithms). That's the whole reason LLMs are so interesting, they are the first time we've captured something very much like thinking and reasoning. It can do many of the things long thought to be the sole purview of humans. That's why anyone that knows anything about the field of AI is astonished by them.

The "intellectual e-waste from Silicon Valley" has produced something amazing, the likes of which we've never seen. (Built on decades of curious people in the AI, neuroscience, computer science, and other fields, of course).