I agree with that part of it. I just do not feel comfortable with the comparison, not yours, but theirs. Because ChatGPT isn't an influencer. Or... shouldn't be.
I'm of 2 minds on this subject overall:
I know from experience that it is easy to defer gathering knowledge to an LLM and that it can be a useful tool
I also know from experience that it can harm, because I've felt it and if I'm 100% honest, I still feel it a little, depending on the subject. 1
There is no precedent for automating cognition, only science fiction, so there is no best practice, no guidance. You cannot be a trained chatbot user. We're making this up as we go, and the painful thing is, so are these "AI researchers". Them not reaching AGI with gpt-5 means they have no fucking clue what they are doing.
Now, if you're an old guy like me the worst thing that can happen is that I completely destroy myself; whatever... I've done my duties. But if I were 30 years younger, or 40, this could have a lasting impact, especially if it doesn't work. And it definitely doesn't work as advertised.
Do we get the damage done to us by some silicon valley scammer without the ultimate benefit? Is that the bottom line?
Footnotes
For example, I right now cannot be bothered to (tediously) write my own data pipelines anymore. I still wrote down the R cubing and charting "code" for that rpi4 analysis I did the other day, but I probably should have vibed that too and saved my energy for solving non-trivial problems. ↩
Footnotes