So it is hard? Not easy? I would agree with that position. I think the analogy with automatic transmissions misses though. Programming actual intelligence into a computer seems orders of magnitude more complex and difficult than building the gearbox for a car.
It is hard in the sense that it's an unsolved problem that emerges due to the way LLMs work. Perhaps some clever ML PhD will come up with a technique to solve it, but right now there's no clear solution.