LLMs are just tools

The way I see it, wide-scale, heavily subsidized and somewhat naive[1] use of LLMs has removed all of a sudden a lot of friction from within systems and processes. Removing friction sounds great if you want to move faster and get things done more quickly. But try walking without friction. Heck, try stopping without friction, it can be exhilarating. Or terrifying, depending on how much you prefer not to break your limbs. A few months ago, I suddenly noticed that the street where I live is actually quite steeply sloped downhill. Coincidentally, I arrived at this conclusion while trying to cross it when there was suddenly a lot of black ice covering it end to end. Never had to do the kind of "swing-by a lamp post and use the neighbors trashcan as a sort of angular momentum barrier" maneuver before. And I hope to not have to do it again. It made me appreciate friction a lot more.

The habits, processes, systems, and culture we are living with and in to create the things that are important to us have been established over a long period of time when friction was there. For better or worse, we have actually built the stuff we rely on with the inherent friction in mind. It is kinda insane (and frankly bewildering) to me that we expect systems that have been calibrated with and around friction to suddenly adapt to environments with a lot less friction involved. It is also somewhat sad to see people denying that there are downsides of suddenly switching it effectively off (or replacing it with frictions that are different, like "I can't justify the expenses of buying computer hardware to hack anymore because the world has gone crazy, so some projects I wanted to do are now on the back-burner") and pretending that there is no moral or ethical component to the wide scale shifting of habits, processes, systems, and culture. :shrug:, I guess?

Cheers,
szm

[1] As in "build unfathomable capacity with no regard for economic sense, ecological restrictions, ethical concerns and other "boring" things that start with the letter e; unleash it on society without discussion and deliberation or even a plan except to somehow either brute force your way to something akin to "AGI" and/or to maximise profits" naive.