[Gehinnn]

> I think the primary change is that these debates were focused on producing diffs that humans read; now the debate is whether the algorithms can accomplish this result with no human involvement at all.

The better the diff captures the intent of the user change, the easier the diff is to read, AND it also becomes easier to understand merge conflicts, as the conflict becomes a conflict of intents and not characters. Sometimes certain conflicts can even be avoided if the diffs are chosen right (or are expressive enough, e.g. when code moves can be detected).