It's not just that I can conceive a universe where I want LLMs to be useful, it's that I and many normies are using it as a tool in basic ways and that there are a bunch of more advanced ways to use it that feel just out of reach. I genuinely don't believe I'll use these tools less in two years than I do today. So for me it's not in the "maybe it'll be useful someday" realm, it's already useful to me now and would be a lot more useful if the ways to use these models weren't so godawful half of the time.

I have in the past weeks used LLMs to:

- write a working, hosted, version controlled and github-linked web app in less than an hour that pulls data from APIs and displays them in a custom way (which I had spent multiple afternoons on before, not getting even 20% as far)

- help me figure out how to write complex Excel formulas

- write the first draft of a Request for Information in such a way that I could skip over the easy questions and hone in on the hard, important questions to ask suppliers

- assist me in figuring out how to diagnose filament extrusion problems I had with my 3D printer

- give me spoiler-free yet highly specific information on a video game I wanted to play

- explain a difficult concept to me in multiple ways from a field I don't know but just want the Pareto 80/20 gist of it

- do boring-ass restructuring of a large .txt tabulated file

- replace at least 30% of all Google searches because Google's search results are already garbage, the SEO slop is already most of it and I can avoid it with an LLM (which feels like garbage on top of garbage but it does the job)

For me, LLMs are mind-blowing when I see a completely novel way of arranging the tool and its inputs, when it opens a new avenue of use cases for me, like how recently multi-agent stacking has got me thinking about what else I can do.

That's different from if I can ever use it in that way. I've never found a personal use for NFTs, but I can conceive of a world where they are useful to me. The "I guess we're doing AI now" is exactly the same as "I guess we're doing NFTs now" was then; soulless corps gonna soulless corp. But just because there is a hype cycle around it all, does not necessarily mean it will recede back into obscurity like NFTs and nerd helmets did. It won't change the world but it's already had a larger impact on my day to day work than crypto has (and we've been talking use cases for a decade on that). How's that not worth something?