Responses like this tickle me because they make clear there’s a batch of human beings who have just a profoundly different experience with LLMs than I do.

I see these things and think, this is incredible, machines seem to be approximating or emulating conscious thought. There must be so much we can learn about ourselves, and so much they can do.

You see the same thing and say meh, useless pattern matching, what’s the point, spend the money elsewhere.

I wonder why we have this different perspective? I’ve seen these two reactions again and again—I suspect they evince two different worldviews, but I don’t know what the correlates are. I don’t think it’s techno optimism/pessimism, because I’m profoundly worried about what happens to us. It’s not purely an age thing—I’m not young. I see it on here all the time so I don’t think it’s field of work. So what is it, I wonder?