A bunch of clones manipulated into a high-pressure situation to accidentally/on-purpose create god… again.

It might not have predicted LLMs but it certainly fit with Herbert's ongoing thematic study of people in insane environments producing unanticipated outcomes.

It's been a while since I read it, but I vaguely remember something about the way they were creating the AI, resonating with recent ai (llm?) developments at the time.

Well it's been more than 40 years since I read it, so trust your memory!

If you haven't, you may want to check out the other books in Herbert's Pandora Sequence (Destination: Void is the beginning)… but they are a bit of an acquired taste.