My problem with AI is the sheer variance of its stupid-smart spectrum. While it's true that human intelligence is not deterministic or predictable, the inconsistency exists in a much narrower band of variance which makes failure modes foreseeable. Thus I would much prefer a system with humans in the loop with processes in place for idiot-proofing.

This is true for "lateral" (I lack a better term) fields of intelligence as well. You don't ask a philosophy professor advice for the rashes on your skin; you see a doctor for that. And yet both the professor and the doctor could be expected to accurately identify from a picture that you do have rashes on your skin. An AI (and I mean in the general sense, not only transformer LLMs) could give you a pretty accurate rundown of Plato and still think the same picture is a beautiful sunrise.

(I don't even kid. Just this morning, an AI labeled a GIF from _Friends_ as a 1950s magazine ad for white bread. Just what in the failure mode is that?)

You can't idiot-proof AI without knowing what's in the training data set and even then you run into question of scale.