Comment by TeMPOraL

I keep saying (need to coin a name for this at some point): LLMs, by their general-purpose nature, subsume software products.

Whatever domain-specific capability some software product[0] has, if it's useful to users now, it's more useful if turned into a tool an outside LLM can wield[1]. Users don't care about software products - on the contrary, the product is what stands between the user and what they actually want. If they can afford to delegate using the product to someone else, they do - whether it's to a friend, an external contractor, or an employee hired for that purpose.

This is the value offering LMMs provide to the user: general delegation. If an LLM can operate some software for you, it frees you to focus on problems you need solved. If it can operate multiple software tools, the benefit to you grows superlinearly, as the LLM can use multiple tools to solve problems not addressed individually by any of them. Problems there are no dedicated tools for at all.

This is a big problem for the software industry as it is, because we're relying on the concept of software product as a monetizable unit - some UI layer that defines what can and cannot be done, that we can charge for, and then double-dip with upsells and dark patterns, as UIs are the perfect marketing platforms. General-purpose LLMs sitting on the outside, they break all that by erasing the "product" boundary - and what's worse (for the industry, it's great for me as the user!), as the multi-modal capabilities get better, there's nothing one can do to stop it - even if you purposefully block and obscure any (classically) machine-friendly endpoints, the LLM will just take the hard way, and operate the UI the same way human does.

There's no way I see this won't upend the entire industry in the next couple of years.

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[0] - This includes both products you buy, and products you rent, aka. SaaS.

[1] - As opposed to "inside LLMs", AKA. AI-in-product integrations everyone's doing these days, in a desperate attempt to stay relevant. Outside vs. inside LLM is a difference between your personal assistant and the assistant at some company's reception desk.