Not all new technology is made equal and can't be compared as such. The electric motor was a new technology we now know did indeed pan out, but there are a string of others which never did and are forgotten about when talking about this. More recently, you could point to NFT's and crypto, both of which people also compared to things like the electric motor.

Whether or not LLM's become an electric motor or an NFT, or something in between, only time will tell