[dTal]

>There is no indication that LLMs are a pathway to meaningful and transformative AI.

Reality check, they are already astoundingly meaningful and transformative AI. They can converse in natural language, recall any common fact off the top of their heads, do research online and synthesize new information, translate between different human languages (and explain the nuances involved), translate a vague hand wavey description into working source code (and explain how it works), find security vulnerabilities, and draw SVGs of pelicans on bicycles. All in one singularly mind-blowing piece of tech.

The age of computers that just do what you tell them to, in plain language, is upon us! My God, just look at the front page! Are we on the same HN?

[ezst]

> Reality check, they are already astoundingly meaningful and transformative AI

The onus of the proof regarding their meaningful and transformative nature is on you.

The largest niche LLMs have so far managed to carve for themselves is software code, with the jury still on the fence as whether the productivity needle actually moved in one direction or the other, and the other, literal jury, enshrining the fact that vibe-coded software is not copyrightable and becomes a public good, that should give pause to any company living of selling software or software-related services as whether they want to poison their well.

Web search hasn't been disrupted very much either with users being quick to realise how hallucinogenic LLM summaries are (with the fact that it's baked in the tech and practically unsolvable being one of the reasons I don't consider LLMs a significant stepping stone towards actual AI).

The age of computers that respond to voice orders was 10 years ago, with Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant, nobody could care less then, and the fact the same systems became less capable after re-inventing themselves on top of LLMs probably won't have people care more now.

[dTal]

We are in such different universes that I fear that this will not be a productive discussion; to my eyes LLMs are the most obviously socially transformative technology in my lifetime, up there with "internet" and "smartphones".

You say the largest niche is software production. Okay, let's talk about that. If the jury is still out then the jury is asleep. When ChatGPT first came out - the GPT3 days, years ago, before "vibe code" was even a term - an artist friend of mine who never wrote a line of code in his life straight-up vibe coded 3d visuals to accompany a performance of the band he was in. In Processing, which he'd never heard of until ChatGPT suggested it to him. Do you realize what this means? Normies can use computers now. Actually use, not just consume. You can describe what you want and the computer will do it - will even ask you for clarification if your specification is too ambiguous. Hell, it will even educate you about the subject matter, meeting you at exactly your level, in your favorite writing style.

If you are still thinking in terms of whether vibe coded software is "copyrightable" or whether LLMs are useful for "selling software", you are a blacksmith scoffing that cars are pointless because they don't need horseshoes. Your entire framework is obsolete.

[kiba]

You are so focused on productivity that you missed the boat on the shape of the problem.

Vibe coded app are just throwaway codes that you don't understand and can't maintain. Most of our technology isn't creating new things but incremental improvement.

You are so focused on productivity when programming 's bottleneck is never about how many features you implement but how much you can understand your codebase.

Nobody cares about your internet slops but they care about verification of facts which unfortunately require human judgement.

LLM are just a different version of library code we already have, except without quality control by default.