No disrespect to them, but unless there is a financial incentive at stake for them (beyond SnP500 exposure), I've gotten to viewing this through the lens of sports teams, gaming consoles and religions. You pick your side, early and guided by hype and there is no way that choice can have been wrong (just like the Wii U, Dreamcast, etc. was the best).

Their viewpoint on this technology has become part of the identity for some unfortunately and any position that isn't either "AGI imminent" or "This is useless" can cause some major emotions.

Thing is, this finding being the case (along with all other LLM limits) does not mean that these models aren't impactful and shouldn't be scrutinised, nor does it mean they are useless. The truth is likely just a bit more nuanced than a narrow extreme.

Also, mental health impact, job losses for white collar workers, privacy issues, concerns of rights holders on training data collection, all the current day impacts of LLMs are easily brushed aside by someone believing that LLMs are near the "everyone dies" stage, which just so happens to be helpful if one were to run a lab. Same if you believe these are useless and will never get better, any discussion about real-life impacts is seen as trying to slowly get them to accept LLMs as a reality, when to them, they never were and never will be.