I think LLMs improve productivity in the present at a significant cost for the future. It's like cutting an R&D department. You might be able to utilize existing approaches better, but you won't make progress, and I think people are way too overconfident in believing everything important has already been developed.

I guess the counterargument here would be that LLMs could improve research as well by optimizing menial tasks. It's kind of similar to how computing has enabled brute-force proofs in math. But I think the fact that students are still required to prove theorems on paper and that problems with brute-force solutions are still studied analytically should show that tools like computers or LLMs are not at all a replacement for the typical research process.