Comment by leoedin
2 days ago
> extremely strong evidence that they are not in fact that useful.
Surely you can't argue in good faith today that LLMs aren't useful? It was a valid argument a year ago, but the latest models are absolutely useful at solving whole classes of problems.
They're not perfect, need to be carefully monitored, can cause weird gambling like dopamine rushes and can cause lazy development habits to creep in. But none of those things negate the fact that, in many situations, they are useful.
Useful = net benefit.
Short-term, sure in some contexts. Long-term? Nobody knows yet.
You can't just redefine useful to mean something it doesn't.
Useful = able to be used for practical purposes.
As an extreme example, most effective weapons are useful to the person using them, but aren't necessarily a net benefit.
Is AI going to make life meaningfully better for most people? That's uncertain. Is it useful for the tasks in front of me today? Yes, definitely.