No, it was actually engines.
The mechanism behind engines were fully understood, any experiments with engines were reproducible and measurable. You could get an engine and create schematics by reverse engireening it.
LLMs, useful as they may be, are not that.
And what might an engine be made of? And a power plant? And a locomotive? And a ship?
Really? jfc.
If that's your rationale we have been replacing humans with atoms. But humans are also made of atoms. Nothing was ever replaced with anything.