All knowledge is distilled from prior knowledge. I don’t think it matters what the author thinks or doesn’t think. The world is different than the one you knew now.
Many "super-duper impressive" examples of LLM use end up being copyright laundering. Maybe the world is different now and copyright laundering is acceptable, but let's not pretend it's that cool and exciting.
Because this methodology enables the creation of a compiler with such capabilities, it also allows for the development of other complex systems across different domains.
C is a standard that can be implemented in myriad ways, yet any implementation must ultimately be capable of compiling any valid C code. By following this methodology, anyone can extend the codebase to support assembly for a different architecture. This project never relied on "copy-pasting" code snippets from GCC or copyright laundering.