alt Hacker NewsI see your argument, but it's not exactly news that an expert found a flaw in a popular tool. You could say the same about Wikipedia--experts have tons of issues with it, but Wikipedia still provides value to non-experts. The most likely alternative to Wikipedia for non-experts is simply not trying to learn anything new.
Similarly with LLMs, you can't just write them off entirely because they sometimes provide misleading or incorrect advice. The positive utility maximizing view is to learn when you need to call in an expert. I recently moved in to a new house and have used Claude extensively to figure out basic things (e.g., adjusting the garage door height, how to mount a TV). However, when the HVAC suddenly stopped working, I gave Claude a shot for an hour and tried some non-destructive fixes, but then realized I had to call in an HVAC expert.
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Slightly OT Nitpick: in regard to experts and Wikipedia, when doing a neuroscience-adjacent MSc, experts in the field actually directed me to Wikipedia as an excellent source for high-level neuroanatomy, including recent research, so I'm not sure your blanket description about experts and Wikipedia is correct.
You 100% can write them off entirely and go about your business as you previously had done. Ignoring the errors, it is very debatable whether there are even productivity gains beyond: human programmer or whatever is excited and cranked up to unsustainable degrees of activity and thinking to 'keep up' with what he thinks is an AI doing the work.
I'm seeing this fairly often and when it isn't garbage it's a capable person who has gotten inspired by their 'collaboration' in which the busywork is being done by a machine, but they're doing so much directing and correcting that it's not unlike what would happen if they got heavy into meth and went on a tear.
You absolutely can write them off entirely and decide for yourself what your comfort level of human-killing speed-freakism you want to pursue in your productivity. There's a long history of humans managing astonishing levels of productivity through self-destructive means. This is not even cheaper, once the 'first one's free' wears off: it's just a novel method of getting humans to burn themselves harder in the belief that they have a magic feather.
The ones who're really throwing themselves into the situation are the ones who'll burn out, but who aren't setting themselves up for atrophy and learned helplessness. Anyone who believes the technology lets them be a lazy manager just getting paid, is in for an unpleasant discovery.
The free alternative to Wikipedia is the library, not “don’t learn anything new ever”.
I find Claude is surprisingly similar to a confident but incorrect coworker, with the benefit that Claude will reevaluate when I correct it.