I've used Erlang professionally and like the ecosystem very much.
I am a bit annoyed with myself for still not having a better understanding of how these LLM's work, because that's important, at the end of the day for evaluating where they are best applied, and where danger lurks.
But they are clearly going to be a game changer. Maybe more, maybe less than some people think, but I've seen enough hype cycles to think there is some substance here.
Suddenly being able to largely automate so many formerly human-only tasks using plain language instructions makes me feel like the nature of the computing experience itself may be evolving profoundly. It has been said that technological progress generally shifts people from being tool users to tool managers, and these language models certainly fit that trend.
Can you provide some examples of the so many tasks that these LLM’s are performing for you that a human was needed before?
On the other hand ChatGPT 3.5 has become immediately useful today. It's already saved multiple hours of time doing nonsense work, or digging around for an answer to that one problem I have. It's succeeded when Stack Overflow, Google, Reddit, and the Official Documentation™ failed me.
That's incredible!!
And like a car I don't really have to know or care how it works (traditionally I didn't care at all about AI tech). Sure, it's a new skill (like driving) that takes some practice to do safely and effectively, but I don't have to know the details of how it works. Just how to use it.
That's why this hype cycle is different, that's why it's not going away. It's useful, and we are collectively figuring out how to use it effectively. We do that through collaboration and communication and HN is one of the key points where ideas are shared. To put a stop on that now would be insanely short sighted. The criticism, post-mortems, retrospectives and "AI is dead" articles will come in time.