It's important to point out flawed arguments when we see them. It's our duty as educated citizens. Here's one such:
Even if you accept that LLMs are a necessary, but ultimately disappointing, step on the way to a much more useful technology like AGI there's still a very good argument to be made that we should stop investing in it now. ... human overlords ... will have absolutely no problem condemning billions to untold suffering and death if it means they can make a few more dollars. We need to figure our shit out as a species before we birth that kind of technology or else we're all going to suffer immensely.
This was my first pass response:
People said the same things about computers in the 1940s and 1950s. Thomas Watson said there was only a market for five computers in the world. Same thing with cars. The New York Times in 1902 called them “useless luxuries” compared to horses. When trains first appeared in the 1800s, doctors warned they could cause brain damage if people moved faster than 30 miles per hour. Electricity was called too dangerous for homes, and even Thomas Edison argued against alternating current saying it would kill people. The internet was called a passing fad in the 1990s by Clifford Stoll.
Every time, the critics were wrong. The same pattern shows up again and again. A new technology looks expensive, dangerous, or pointless until it becomes part of everyday life. LLMs fit that same story.
Not "every time". Remember NFTs? Beanie Babies? Pogs?
Not everything that people said wasn't going to actually amount to anything ends up amounting to something either.
LLMs fit the pattern of NFTs too.
Go read this, touch grass, and try not to fall for hype.
As a final note, the poster of the content in the screenshot you posted seems to think AI is going to help rich assholes fuck over the proletariat more than it's doing already. Maybe. But I don't think there's evidence that it's actually likely to be useful for anything any time soon yet (except scamming people, of course). Yes, companies are "replacing people with AI", but there's not really evidence that that's actually helping them to increase the wealth gap. The stories are all dismal failures that cost the companies money rather than increasing their bottom line. It's the "shovel sellers" in this "gold rush" that are making money off of it. The ones actually making and ~~scamming~~ marketing it to other ~~chumps~~ companies that are making money. For now. Until the bubble pops.
That said, the blockchain bubble has been repeatedly artificially propped up by, among other things, Trump. The "AI" bubble may well be with us for quite a long time before everyone figures out it was a massive nothing-burger from the beginning.
Or maybe there will be some huge breakthrough (if so, I highly doubt it will be in LLMs; I think a breakthrough would require a whole new set of algorithms and tools) and AI will produce something actually "useful" (if not "good".)