Next token prediction is still how pre-training works, but that's a relatively small part of the whole training run nowadays. Most of the time is spent in post-training reinforcement learning scenarios, where models are scored based on an evaluation of their ability to complete a task, not whether any specific token correctly predicts a known next token.

Generally, anyone talking about next token prediction being some limiting factor of LLM capability is a good reason to ignore them, as they haven't updated their understanding of LLMs since 2023 or so.