Why does AI feel so different?

Here is how I approach this - this might be a coping mechanism, but it’s certainly helped me personally.

LLMs are hugely impressive, no-one is denying that. But they have already been out for nearly 3 years at this point, and there are still massive gaps in their functionality that mean, in their current state, they are nowhere near being able to take over highly skilled work (e.g. software engineering at senior+ levels) from humans. They can handle grunt work well, but are unable to go beyond that: they operate at the level of a (poor) junior.

LLMs remind me to some extent of journalists and the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. When I ask an LLM a question in an area I am not an expert in, I’m impressed. On the other hand, when I ask it something I am an expert in, I am almost always disappointed. I don’t bother using them for complex work any more, because they lie and hallucinate too much.

Furthermore, the rate of progress appears to be slowing.

All of this gives me some hope that my own life will not be completely ruined as a result of this technology.

We are living in an unprecedented golden age of peace and prosperity. What collapse are you talking about?

Yes, climate change is gonna knock a few percent points off global GDP, but it's not gonna be the end of the world. It's no worse than living in the UK rather than the US in these terms.

Keep in mind that this impact comes super imposed the our regularly scheduled growth.

We also also plenty of relatively low cost mitigation strategies. (Though many of them are not currently politically feasible.)

> [...] we're watching the United States transform into State Capitalism [...]

Hard to believe, but luckily there's more than one country on the planet.

Please vote with your feet!

Historically (at least for the last century or so) we mostly stopped lowering working hours and instead focused on increased output.

Eg people still work eight hours a day, but get paid vastly more in real terms than in the 1950s. Instead of working only one hour a day (or fewer years or whatever) and taking a 1950s compensation package.

Of course, this is merely a statistical observation. There are plenty of people who eg decide to retire early on a modest nest egg.

Of course they're exciting from a tech perspective but I can't help but feel people are missing the bigger picture.

You are right that a general productivity boom is hard to detect so far.

But we already have certain industries with more than measurable productivity impact.

A very salient example: first level call centre agents. The kind of unfortunate souls who are paid to man a phone and not allowed to deviate from their script, nor authorised to actually solve your problem.

The companies renting out these services make heavy use of current AI and that has measurably affected hiring, staffing, prices etc.

Even fairly basic AI (like what we have today) is good for this use case.

Does it suck: sure. Does it suck more than the status quo with warm bodies without power: not really. And it's cheaper.