Re the societal layer, it's not about the wannabe people though - there are real documented cases of how these big systems were trained, using deeply unethical

Re the societal layer, it's not about the wannabe people though - there are real documented cases of how these big systems were trained, using deeply unethical practices (e.g. outsourcing processing of highly disturbing images to "ghost" workers in Kenya while paying them <$2/hour, by OpenAI). These have been studied by folks with PhDs in the field, so not something to be simply discounted (take a look at https://www.dair-institute.org/publications https://www.dair-institute.org/publications, for example). Re reasoning, I'm more curious what you think of the non-statistical school of thought, e.g. the arguments against LLMs as "reasoning" engines, as popularized by Noam Chomsky and Gary Marcus.