That's very true in terms of how capable these chatbots clearly are, but I believe the author was using 'underwhelming' to refer to the societal impact.
So far, life goes on roughly the same as it did five years ago. This can feel 'underwhelming' in contrast to the onslaught of public discussion about, and huge investments in, AI.
Most of us here on HN are programmers, and we all know how radically LLMs have changed our code projects. Even so, the change to our everyday lives (aside from our work or hobby project) is not, just yet, glaringly obvious. This year, it's mainly... every website shoves an AI box on its site that nobody seems to want!
There is also that contrast about it being genuinely useful for work/programming and the fact that, for now, it changes the rest of my life in a negative way - by making PC hardware unavailable, by hearing every day I'll be out of work in 6-24 months, and by having to deal with people taking the information from Chat for granted.