It matters because they used to be just dumb, but now they are at the same time smart and dumb.

I can work on ideas with LLMs, even within my own area of expertise. They know quite a lot, and can take an idea I have and run with it. I would never trust them to be correct, but if I give them a new idea and ask them to work out details and raise any issues they find, I can quickly evaluate their findings, and take them into account when developing the idea further.

I do not do this on all ideas, not even most. Most of the time it is still me, a sheet of paper or some code. But still, comparing to how it was a year ago, it is night and day!

A year ago I would just close the window after the first reply, shaking my head at its stupidity. I can still get that experience by using anything but Opus 5.5 or Fable. I tried the $20 ChatGPT tier last week and was immediately thrown back to that old annoyance! (I am sure the best OpenAI models are fine)