We'll likely reconstruct what the missing piece was in hindsight, but it's very probable there's no one missing piece. Just like human evolution.

I am not convinced there even is a missing piece. I mean, LLMs are being used very differently compared to how traditional AI programs were written. Combining both worlds might be all that is needed.

I would not be surprised that when we have general artificial intelligences, we will see, that advancing LLMs wasn't necessary.

Until it's been found, you mean?

Maybe even then too!