Is this some sort of avant-garde sarcasm that is meant to be funny? I'm genuinely asking, I am having trouble modeling a live human being that reads any amount of llm-related news and says this without it being facetious.

It's an observation of how people respond to marketing. Apple objectively dragged their feet on LLM software and hardware research. After 3 (!!!) years we finally have a good LLM Siri, and the first note that this guy makes is "oh it's ethical" to cover for Apple's wasted time.

I find it pretty funny, but the author probably doesn't. Americans ought to know better than to utter "ethical" and "Apple" in the same breath.