There are LLM optimists and LLM pessimists.
The optimists have been more correct in predicting the capabilities and usefulness of LLMs.
The pessimists seem to have a hard time rationalizing what they thought with what’s actually happening.
The optimists have been more correct in predicting the capabilities and usefulness of LLMs.
The pessimists seem to have a hard time rationalizing what they thought with what’s actually happening.
So what has an "LLM" truly improved in your life outside of simplistic automations/code generation/textual work? It's definitely not improved support. The only support interaction that I've noted to be somewhat better was one (of a few) with Amazon where the bot was able to refund a purchase without talking to a real person. But even then it was a case wherein a human would have probably done it just as quick. Is there a win there? Sure: for Amazon but it didn't "delight" me. And a chatbot is the lowest of low hanging fruit all the "optimists" claim an LLM can do so much better than humans or deterministic code.
How would you say LLMs are impacting the markets? Do you think they're useful to the economy thus far? Or are you looking at the spend of a small fraction of companies that could cause a broader recession when the cyclical funding dries up? If you're going to go to open weight models - well those don't appear out of thin air. Is your focus on the win/loss truly that myopic?
Again, your statement seems absurd to me. I think most people can agree there are useful modalities with LLMs. But it's always at a cost and I, like the author of the article, don't think that LLMs are as universally useful as many "optimists" believe. But to say that the pessimists can't actually rationalize their thoughts, when you provide none of your own, is truly foot in mouth garbage.
And just to be clear, I think LLMs will be a net negative on society.
I have to keep reminding myself though, many of those pessimists are people “getting paid to not understand” as the saying goes.
It took 30 seconds with that Davinci model to predict where we are today, where we’ll be next year, and the eventual destruction if not outright extinction of humanity as we know it. Maybe the future is so grim many are simply in the denial stage still.
And then there are LLM realists ( Read realpolitik: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger ).
I hate LLMs to the bone and am a master at "people not using the technology can change their behavior to neutralize the impact of the technology". Coupled with an 150+ IQ, I can tell you this technology won't go away. Cynically and pragmatically I use and will use it to the maximum extent of enslaving and eliminating the drone of drones who worship it. Go ahead, replace your mediocrity and lack of critical thinking with something that surely won't spit you out in a ditch a few years from now!
I’m happy to engage in discourse on the impact and risks to environment, society, jobs, mental health, etc. There’s plenty of room for thoughtful exploration there.
The one thing I have no patience for is that LLMs produce nothing of value or have no technical worth.
The recent efficiency gains in AI have been unparalleled in the history of computing as far as I know. We often point at how a single computer used to occupy an entire room, and over the course of decades of progress, are now wildly surpassed by computers that fit in our pocket. Inference of frontier language models that used to occupy entire data centers earlier this year (Claude Opus 4.6) are now comfortably surpassed in capability by models that can run on a single high end consumer grade gaming PC. I predict data center construction will collapse not just due to pushback from people who hate them, but also lack of demand from people who actually do use AI. People who like AI tend to like running their AI at home, and now they can.
The most important risks in AI right now are the social ones you mentioned. How does the economy evolve? How do we take advantage of this to maximize joy and love? Perhaps most importantly: how do we avoid (incentivize against) falling into a techno-dictatorship?