Is there actual research proving whether LLMs can lead to AGI—or are we just arguing opinions?

You've probably noticed everyone has a hot take on whether large language models (LLMs) can eventually become artificial general intelligence (AGI), but where's the actual science backing it up? This person is frustrated that the debate seems stuck in opinion territory with no solid research evidence on either side. It's a fair point—there's a lot of confident speculation but surprisingly little rigorous academic work directly addressing whether scaling up LLMs is a viable path to AGI or a dead end. Worth diving into if you want to move past the hype and find what researchers actually know (and don't know) about this.