This is basically why I can't take any mathematician arguments at face value. It seems like the majority of them intertwine some sort of status game with their arguments.
I also realize the "status game" is needed for funding / grants, but that is irrelevant to AI/LLMs, for example, you can ask whether this was the right method to begin with although it "worked" in some way or sense prior to the release of AI/LLMs. To ask the world to change at their pace or at their whim is very unlikely to happen.