Just the fact that even retail quality hardware is still improving at local LLM significantly is still a great sign. If AI quality remained the same, and the cost for local hardware dropped to $1000, it would still be the greatest thing since the internet IMO. So even if the worst happens and all progress stops, I'm still very happy with what we got.
>I'm still very happy with what we got
"One person's slop is another person's treasure"
I'm not all that impressed with "AI". I often "race" the AI by giving it a task to do, and then I start coding my own solution in parallel. I often beat the AI, or deliver a better result.
Artificial Intelligence is like artificial flavoring. It's cheap and tastes passable to most people, but real flavors are far better in every way even if it costs more.