Comment by fatherwavelet

There is a critical failure in education - people are not being taught how to debate without degenerating into a dominance debate or merely an echo chamber of talking points. It's a real problem, people literally do not understand that a question is not an opportunity to show off or to dominate, but is a request for an exchange of information.

And that problem is not just between people, this lack of communication skill continues with people's internal self conversations. Many a bully personality is that way because they bully themselves and terrorize themselves.

It's no wonder that people can use AI at all, with how poorly people communicate. So the cluster of nonsense that is all the shallow thinkers directing people down incorrect paths is completely understandable. They are learning by doing, which with any other technology would be fine, but with AI to learn how to use it by using it can serious damage one's cognitive ability, as well as leave a junkyard of failed projects behind.

I’m not sure you read my comment. I didn’t claim LLMs have reached a ceiling – I’m very bullish on them.

The point I was making is about the baseline capability that even sceptics tend to concede: if LLMs were “only” good at CRUD and task automation (which I don’t think is their ceiling), that alone is already economically and socially transformative.

A huge share of white-collar work is effectively humans doing CRUD and coordination. Compressing or automating that layer will have second- and third-order effects on productivity, labour markets, economics, and politics globally for decades.