8 or 9 years is about right for when modern LLMs started. Do people really think LLMs just sprang into existence a few years ago with giant corporations pushing them?

The tech is decades old depending on how you look at it, and even under a rather strict definition it's pushing at least a decade.

To be fair to qualify for all of that unless your a researcher on transformer models or something I really doubt your going to find anyone that fits all those points for that length of time.