Ref: The apocalypse isn’t coming. We must resist cynicism and fear about AI - Stephen Marche
The most important thing to remember about tech doomerism in general is that it’s a form of advertising, a species of hype. Remember when WeWork was going to end commercial real estate? Remember when crypto was going to lead to the abolition of central banks? Remember when the metaverse was going to end meeting people in real life? Silicon Valley uses apocalypse for marketing purposes: they tell you their tech is going to end the world to show you how important they are.
The examples aren’t good here. And it is different this time.
The main reason is that for the first time any individual on the planet with an internet connection can immediately start harnessing the power of LLMs. And they can use it to augment many of their existing workflows/routines.
This wasn’t the case in any of the examples above:
Scale + Utility withing existing systems
Bitcoin could be operated with at scale. But it was something extremely new. And its success would have required a massive overhaul of our existing financial systems. The thing with LLMs is that nothing has to be overthrown/overhauled to use them. It seamlessly helps you with your existing tasks: writing essays, scripts, poems, code, reading legal doc, summarizing long form deal documents, and what not.
It has already encroached many facets of different fields together. Many of my peers say that they will give up on a programming career if their AI Co-pilot is taken away from them. The same is happening with entrepreneurs, business owners, tech-preneurs .. they can now get so much done and not have to hire individuals to do redundant tasks.
That’s why I think it is different this time.