Author here - Yes it works. I have two programmatic sites so far, one of which I built in public on my blog. I also consulted on programmatic SEO for a bit. Just like human written content, Google won't index your pages if they are low quality or straight up spam. You have to actually provide value to the user. A common example I use for when programmatic SEO is appropriate is nutritional information.
Here's a twitter thread with legitimate websites getting millions of traffic each month from programmatic SEO: https://twitter.com/allison_seboldt/status/16195138347790499...
I also created a free course on the subject to address people's concerns about this approach, and to teach them how to do it the right way: https://asebold.gumroad.com/l/free-programmatic-seo-course