Comment by api

A big problem is that you're either hearing breathless over the top insane hype (or doomerism, which is breathless over the top hype taken to a dark place) or skepticism that considers AI/LLMs to be in the same league as NFTs.

Neither of these is accurate, but I guess nuanced thinking or considering anything below surface vibes is out these days.

So far after playing with them I'm using them as:

1. A junior intern that can google really really fast and has memorized a large chunk of the Internet and the library, and can do rough first-pass research and dig for things.

2. Autocomplete 2.0 that can now generate things like boilerplate or fairly pedestrian unit tests.

3. Rubber duck debugging where the rubber duck talks back.

4. A helper to explain code, at least for a first pass. I can highlight a huge piece of code and ask it to summarize and then explain and walk me through it and it does a passable job. It doesn't get everything right but as long as you know that, it's a good way to break things down and get into it.

For those things it's pretty good, and it's definitely a lot of fun to play with.

I expect that it will get better. I don't expect it to replace programmers for anything but the most boring mindless tasks (the ones I hate doing), but I expect it to continue to become more and more useful as super-autocomplete and all the other things I listed.