Yes this reads as a massive backhanded compliment. But as u/KronisLV said, its trendy to hate on AI now. In the face of something many in the industry don't understand, that is mechanizing away a lot of labor, that clearly isn't going away, there is a reaction that is not positive or even productive but somehow destructive: this thing is trash, it stole from us, it's a waste of money, destroys the environment, etc...therefore it must be "resisted." Even with all the underhanded work, the means-ends logic of OpenAI and other major companies involved in developing the technology, there is still no point in stopping it. There was a group of people who tried to stop the mechanical loom because it took work away from weavers, took away their craft--we call them luddites. But now it doesn't take weeks and weeks to produce a single piece of clothing. Everyone can easily afford to dress themselves. Society became wealthier. These LLMs, at the very least they let anyone learn anything, start any project, on a whim. They let people create things in minutes that used to take hours. They are "creating value," even if its "slop" even if its not carefully crafted. Them's the breaks--we'd all like our clothing hand-weaved if it made any sense. But even in a world where one
could have the time to sit down and weave their own clothing, carefully write out each and every line of code, it would only be harmful to take these new machines away, disable them just because we are afraid of what they can do. The same technology that created the atom bomb also created the nuclear reactor.
“But where the danger is, also grows the saving power.”