I agree with your premise completely! No job is beneath us. That is why I consider myself very fortunate, having had to learn the principles of my disciplines from the ground up. I studied everything up from pure mathematics through boolean logic, algorithms and data structures, operating systems, and programming languages from assembler up. Out in the real world, I similarly worked my way through every task a novice, then a junior developer, and finally a senior developer has to deal with, from tiny bugfixes to larger and larger projects, to projects that I designed and had increasingly larger teams over longer time horizons execute. I am only in the PhD phase of my scientific career, but I am taking on the same progression in that field.
Where we disagree is that it's precisely that training that allows me to supervise the outputs of an LLM. On their own, they make many mistakes, and again I completely agree with you. Sometimes they produce nonsense. It's precisely the decades of experience that allows me to supervise that work, make corrections as needed, or sometimes reject the first pass entirely and do my own. This is what allows me to produce more in the same amount of time without a drop in quality.
Great points, I just have a different take on the end result.
Depends on what your job is. If your job is exclusively the production of highly crafted artefacts with no repetitive, tedious, or rote elements whatsoever, then sure.
But in the real world, there are very very few people like that. Those that do tend to have executive assistants already.
In practice, most knowledge jobs benefit from software that encapsulates, well, knowledge.
As a software engineer, LLMs help me produce boilerplate code, hook up interfaces I don't need to bother to learn, do first-pass coding that I would otherwise have a junior engineer do, write documentation, and turn outlines into full-fledged design docs. As a biomedical researcher, they help me polish up my writing, write tedious administrative responses, and act as documentation for PowerPoint and Excel. As a medical student, they help me do first-pass research on new topics, as well as quickly answer things I would need to look up in long-winded reference databases. As a private individual, they help me draft boilerplate emails, recommendation letters, and in general turn outlines into text.
If LLMs aren't making you more productive, then you have a job in which every second of your day requires your fully engaged intelligence, with no repetitive or boring responsibilities. If so, good for you! For the rest of us, LLMs are a godsend.
I would put it to you that you could also benefit from LLMs, if only to draft tedious emails, documentation, or design docs. We tend to have a pervasive attitude on Slashdot that LLMs are too stupid to help us. I think we are missing out on many benefits because we're too proud to find how they can fit into our workflows. They are not AGIs, but that doesn't mean they aren't helpful.
Legalising addictive drugs is like legalizing coercive control and wife beating.
Subsitute "she should have walked away" with "they should have had self control".
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.