It is a valid point. I am not an authority on linguistics and Chomsky absolutely is ( to the best of my knowledge his theories and contributions to linguistics were not disproved ). However, and this is part my original argument: he is not arguing linguistics. He is arguing intelligence. No. More than that. He is actually arguing an unintelligence, which is a new abstract concept and one that is not a colloquially used.

I may be wrong, but if that is the case, and we are still arguing with appeal to authority, shouldn't he defer to experts in that field? Shouldn't AI experts opinion be valued more than his observation?

Note, I am merely raising a possibility that he is wrong about this particular idea.

More to the point, do you think his understanding of syntax really means he understands the underpinnings of AI; the same AI that merely tries to emulate human language capability?