> which is to say so amazing it is really beyond belief and they are getting more so every year.

We've normalized science fiction. Go back 5-10 years and ask anyone whether we'd soon have something like LLMs.

If you step back and try to look at LLMs without emotions and politics, you will be blown away by what this thing can do. We're talking to a machine, folks.

I just can't believe that LLM haters really like computers or technology, because we haven't seen anything this interesting in decades.

You prompted me to have a little sci-fi fantasy about a world where LLMs are exciting. It goes like this: imagine they were local-only, from the the start, and this was baked into the whole concept because each one has an owner, and it is trained on that owner's mind, in an intimate and slightly trippy process. None of its background information comes from any other source. It's possible to talk to somebody else's LLM, but this is rarely done because it would be awkward and intrusive, and difficult to interpret. Consequently, nobody ever dreams of connecting an LLM with any server. There is no giant ugly industry for training them. They are personal in every way and have nothing to do with the internet or any of its assholes, and do not represent some bland and inscrutable centralized source of truth. Their output always goes to the owner, is hard for other people to understand, and does not provide an opportunity to spam everybody else with vapid boilerplate. Now, I'm excited to own one of these!

>We've normalized science fiction.

That is the thing I am mad about. We are getting bastardized versions of the science fictions of our childhood.

I fantasized about instant communicators across worlds, and we get mobile phones that work by planting a gazillion antennas across the globe. And people hail them as futuristic and say things like this.

I fantasied about human like robots and positronic brains, and we get a regurgitation of past humanity, in text, ensuring a future of total intellectual and artistic winter.

I fantasized a future with perfect health, but we get a million doctors and hospitals and a normalised dependency on medicines and an existence that is unthinkable without health insurance!

I fantasized about antigravity flying cars, and we get drones.

What ever it is, these things are blocking the path to the science fiction of my childhood.

So that is why I am not excited about these things. Not because I don't like computers and technology, but because I REALLY like them.

> We've normalized science fiction. Go back 5-10 years and ask anyone whether we'd soon have something like LLMs.

LLMs are incredibly impressive. It just doesn't follow from that that they're capable of all the things proponents claim they are.

> I just can't believe that LLM haters really like computers or technology

In a lot of ways the reverse is true. The LLM coding ecosystem seems designed by people who are unaware or actively despise the fact that they have access to a computer, and almost the entire point of LLMs is to make interacting with computers less like interacting with computers and more like interacting with people.

> We're talking to a machine, folks.

And? I didn't sign up to talk to a machine.

Has it actually made your daily life better? All I see as a result of LLMs is endless slop everywhere, plateauing in the skill levels of coworkers, and badly informed people in management positions pushing the humans to meet impossible deadlines because "otherwise we'll replace you with a cheaper worker and an LLM".

I am an LLM optimist, but I'll be honest and say it hasn't made my life better. My optimism relies on the models plateauing, and people finally rebelling against the widespread slop to realize that LLMs are just another (very useful!) tool, but don't meaningfully replace people in any capacity.

> I just can't believe that LLM haters really like computers or technology, because we haven't seen anything this interesting in decades.

Yup. As someone who thinks computing has been in decline since Mac OS X 10.4, LLMs are the first major tech trend that I've been impressed by in 20 years.

I used to like computers and technology, then I realized AI is really dangerous. Getting back on topic, I admit that AI is very useful and will become much more so between now and when it kills us all or permanently dis-empowers us in some other way.