alt Hacker NewsI don't know how far back you're intending to go on Zitron, but I listened a bit to him about 8 months ago, and I got the impression then that his opinion was exactly the same as what he's bringing to the table in that quote. The AI can "do" whatever you believe it does, but it does it so poorly that it's not doing it in any worthwhile sense of the word.
I could of course be projecting my opinions onto him, but I don't think your characterization of him is accurate. Feel free to provide receipts that show my impression of his opinion to be wrong though.
I think that’s roughly right — both then and now he has stressed that people think it does something but it fails to do so. However I do think I’ve seen a subtle shift in phrasing in both him and other critics as it has become more obvious and undeniable that experienced and highly skilled experts in various domains are in fact using LLMs productively to do all those things (most notably producing software)
I dug around a bit but wasn’t able to find a slam dunk quote from a year ago. Might look around more later.