> Almost all statements Yann LeCun made back then (LLMs won't be able to do this or that) turned out to be wrong

You're being uncharitable. He would have been right if Chain of Thought hadn't been pulled out of a hat, and no one saw it coming, or how u reasonably effective it would be.

Today, no one can know if there will be a future step-change improvement to LLMs at the same level as CoT, and conversely, no one can be absolutely certein there won't be - so it shouldn't be a firable offense because neither position obvious; even though it will look like it in hindsight.