For me, it’s already a jetliner in the context of coding assist. It’s correct more often than top hits provided by a top search engine (and any coworker), and it is a very enjoyable user experience (no ads and SEO garbage to filter out). I’d say the wright brothers version was something like BERT or earlier GPTs.

I see that the analogy is having the unintended side-effect of apparently being predicated on a supposed utility of ChatGPT’s direct descendants. The point I want to get across is how difficult anything like it seemed before, regardless of whether it begets anything markedly better afterwards.

Of course every case of anything is different in detail. On the other hand, identifying patterns is often useful in understanding human reactions to change. Do you disagree with this, or do you think there is something special about inventions?

My analysis here is that the young person in question appeared to focus only on current utility. You have not yet explained why you say it is a failed analysis of why that response may seem surprising.

A lot depends on the definition of "understand" you want to use. According to some definitions there is already some kind of understanding going on in the current generation of LLMs, according to others true understanding requires a soul in the Christian sense and thus it is unattainable an LLM, and of course there is a spectrum of opinions in-between.