I just have a hobbyist curiosity in the area, I think learning ml basics removed alot of the magic of ai hype, I at least like to think I'm less susceptible to hype and bs. I feel like I have a good idea what is going on and what the limits are of models and how to use them. There is a bigger world of ai besides llm

Depends on your goals though, using llm just seems like using any other api to me.