Some machines, maybe. But attention-based LLMs aren't these machines.

The same way a todler creeping is the start of the general concept of space exploration.

But to your point, I do see a lot of people very emotionally and psychologically committed to pointing out how deeply magical humans are, and how impossible we are to replicate in silicon. We have a religion about ourselves; we truly do have main character syndrome. It's why we mistakenly thought the earth was at the center of the universe for eons. But even with that disproved, our self-importance remains boundless.

This a straw man, the question isn't if this is possible or not (this is an open question), it's about whether or not we are already here, and the answer is pretty straightforward: no we aren't. (And the current technology isn't going to bring us anywhere near that)