A lot of the magic of LLMs, I think, has been tarnished by these CEOs and other FAANG companies. It might have been a far more interesting world if they didn't bring "AI" or "AGI" into the conversation in such a politicized way.

Unfortunately, this is the only way to get enough venture capital to support the compute needs for this kind of technology. Who is going to spend hundreds on billions on a vague idea without regular claims that this will upend the existing economy in six to twelve months and whoever owns it will become unfathomably rich? And despite all the actual developments we have seen going against that idea, investors keep falling for it. This will continue until it crashes, one way or another. The question is how long it can build up and how deep the fall will be. LLMs will certainly change the economy in the end, but so did mortgage backed securities.

It's a sad indictment of our society that there is always a shortage of money for medical care, infrastructure, housing, food stamps and space exploration but always a surplus of cash for war and tools that purport to replace the workforce.

War accelerated evolution, it’s why it exists.