LLMs are being driven mostly by grifters trying to achieve a monopoly before they run out of cash. Under those conditions I find their promises hard to believe. I'll wait until they either go broke or stop losing money left and right, and whatever is left is probably actually useful.
You'll note I don't mention AGI or future model releases in my annual roundup at all. The closest I get to that is expressing doubt that the METR chart will continue at the same rate.
If you focus exclusively on what actually works the LLM space is a whole lot more interesting and less frustrating.
I'm just a casual user, but I've been doing the same and have noticed the sharp improvements of the models we have now vs a year ago. I have OpenAI Business subscription through work, I signed up for Gemini at home after Gemini 3, and I run local models on my GPU.
I just ask them various questions where I know the answer well, or I can easily verify. Rewrite some code, factual stuff etc. I compare and contrast by asking the same question to different models.
AGI? Hell no. Very useful for some things? Hell yes.