Just search for "System 1 / System 2" and add word "researcher" there, filter by time <1y< and you'll find plenty. OP is right that a bunch of people made far-going predictions, & now doing mental gymnastics to justify they were right all along. Most notably, LeCun https://www.threads.net/@yannlecun/post/DD0ac1_v7Ij and Chollet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9WE1aOPjHc

Some argue they were kind of tricked into thinking that; see https://www.interconnects.ai/p/openais-o1-using-search-was-a... and some other writing by Lambert which has turned out pretty much on-point as far as RL and verifiers are concerned.