as in vacuous memorizers, reciting things they've seen, sometimes in new combinations?

They definitely aren't vacuous memorizers. GP's description of them as "bullshit generators" is correct. They generate plausible-sounding text that (when it includes facts) is often counterfactual.

Much better said, i agree

I would love it if this nukes the SEO industry and the internet goes back to forums and community groups.

The best info is almost always locked up in these places.

LLMs will do the opposite. The internet will get flooded with machine-generated bullshit.

exactly. my only hope is that the flooding of cheap bulshit craters the market via oversupply. a combination of to much shit text competeing for ad space drops their revenue and people having diminishing trust for it reducing the ad clicks for it dropping the ad revenue even more

But LLM, while able to generate spam, if used used for search will reduce the need to click on a website, reducing the traffic to SEO websites… driving down profitability of doing it.