I get some of the surface level reasons, and those annoy me too. Cramming AI into everything is dumb and unnecessary.
However, I do feel that at a deeper level, it has a lot of useful applications that will absolutely change society and improve the efficiency and skills of those who use it. For example, if someone wants to learn to code, they could take a few different paths. There are the traditional paths, just read or go to school and learn to code that way. Or you could pay for a bootcamp or an online coding education platform. Or, you could just tell an AI chatbot you want to learn to code, and have them become your teacher, and correct any errors you make in real time. Another application is in generating ideas or quick mock ups. Say I’m playing a game of d&d with friends. I need a character avatar so I just provide a description to the AI and it makes it up quick. It might take a few prompts, but it usually does a pretty good job. Or if I have a scenario I need to make a few enemies for, I could just provide the description of those enemies and have a quick stat block made up for them.
I realize that there are underlying issues with regard to training the AI on others work, but as someone who is a musician myself, and a supporter of open source as often as possible, I feel that it’s a bit hypocritical for people to get upset about AI “stealing” work with regard to code or other stuff that people willingly put out there for free for others to consume. Any artist or coder could “steal” the work of others for inspiration for their work, the same as an AI does, an AI is just much more efficient about it. I do think that most of the corporations that are pushing some new AI feature or promising the world or end of the labor force is full of shit, and that we are definitely in some sort of an AI bubble, but the technology itself is definitely useful in a lot of ways, and if it can be developed on a more localized and decentralized scale (community owned AI hubs anyone?), it could actually be a really powerful and beneficial technology for organizations and individuals looking to do more with less.
It will change society. It won’t improve skills.
Studies already show the opposite at play. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.08872v1
If the LLM could teach you how to code, but couldn’t do the coding for you, it would be a tool for improvement. But it isn’t used that way. Instead of saying “teach me how to code this”, people are more inclined to say “code this for me”.
On top of that, they’re controlled by corporations who are not in the slightest bit interested in your welfare, privacy or economic success. They will invade your privacy, fuck over the environment, fuck over people and load their LLMs with propoganda and barriers that serve their political and social interests.
And as a bonus, they’re a nightmare for the environment.
Having said all of that. I agree, they are going to fundamentally reshape society. But it’s like the industrial revolution. Yeah, we ended up with a more efficient society, but it didn’t make people freer, it further entrenched wealth in the hands of the wealthy, whilst fucking up the environment. That’s what LLMs are going to do.
We could do them differently. That implementation isn’t inherent in their nature. But we won’t do them differently, because the people pushing it want the shitty outcome, because it’s not shitty for them.