>I'm somewhat surprised at how poorly the cutting edge models do with being concise.

because they're not intelligent in the sense you're hinting at (conceptual integrity or generalization) but they are as the name suggests, large. Like comparing a forklift to a human. It's easier to bulldoze through a lot of things than tie your shoes.

If we weren't quite as impoverished conceptually and still had the vocabulary of the Catholics we'd recognize this as ratio (discursive knowledge) vs Intellectus (apprehending knowledge)