> Well, are they useful? ... Yeah, of course LLMs are useful, but we need to remain somewhat grounded in reality. How useful are LLMs?
They are useful enough that they can passably replace (much more expensive) humans in a lot of noncritical jobs, thus being a tangible tool for securing enterprise bottom lines.
From what I've seen in my own job and observing what my wife does (she's been working with the things on very LLM-centric processes and products in a variety of roles for about three years) not a lot of people are able to use them to even get a small productivity boost. Anyone less than very-capable trying to use them just makes a ton more work for someone more expensive than they are.
They're still useful, but they're not going to make cheap employees wildly more productive, and outside maybe a rare, perfect niche, they're not going to increase expensive employees' productivity so much that you can lay off a bunch of the cheap ones. Like, they're not even close to that, and haven't really been getting much closer despite improvements.
They are useful enough that they can passably replace (much more expensive) humans in a lot of noncritical jobs, thus being a tangible tool for securing enterprise bottom lines.