[NitpickLawyer]

Schrodinger's AI.

On the one hand, it's bad, bad, hitting walls, getting badder, it's the baddest we've seen, failure, bubble, etc.

On the other hand it's taking jobs left and right, whatarewegonnado?!

The signal to noise ratio in reporting about AI is extremely low.

[Doches]

To be fair, both of those statements ("AI progress has plateaued" and "AI is taking jobs") can be true at once! There's almost certainly some disconnect between improving frontier models and UX vs. increasing adoption, particularly outside what you'd normally think of as pure tech companies.

Put another way: an LLM replacement for entry-level workers doesn't have to be good, just good enough.