alt Hacker NewsIt's not all that surprising that people were worried and believed this. The AI companies and infrastructure companies partnering with them have spent a lot of money and time trying to convince people this is the case year after year. The critical clue people miss is that everyone claiming that has very clear financial incentives to convince people that's the case even when they know it isn't. Anyone who was actually building with LLMs and judging for themselves based on its performance knew fully well that wasn't the case year after year.
I've said this before: if anthropic (et al) thought they genuinely had a shot at replacing even 30% of white collar work, they would ABSOLUTELY NOT warn ANYONE. They would do what oil, leaded gas, and cigarette companies did. Swear under oath this is completely safe, commit GRIEVOUS societal harm that you explicitly promised wouldn't happen, and then end up in history books instead of jail for reasons beyond my ability to fathom.
No. The very fact they are trying to "warn" us means it's all marketing.
This has been corroborated for me on the engineering front that I can't find a single IC I respect who actually thought there was any evidence AI was going to live up to the hype. I saw a lot of people I always thought were idiots/sycophants/brown nosers go insane with AI. Never saw anyone id trust to help me cross a street blindfolded say more that "I may be wrong, but I'm not seeing any evidence yet".