But it is also a fun and interesting technology that when used appropriately can reduce barriers around explorations and learning new things.
Unfortunately like most technology nowadays, engagement at the expense of everything else will continually eek away minimally at peoples’ remaining attention skills or worse by reducing peoples’ capacity to form relationships with real flawed humans.
I recently embarked on a personal journey of reading the Gnostic nag hammadi collection and a modern translation of the Christian gospels from a James Hillman multiplicity frame (and from my direct experience from thousands of hours of Buddhist meditation) and it’s been tremendously fruitful. I mark up the documents I read and then every so often discuss with an LLM and I find it a lovely experience. I’ve started seeing Christianity from a new frame (having been raised Presbyterian against my will when younger) as something much more lovely than I considered before. Christian mysticism reminds me a lot now of non-dual Buddhist traditions, and centering prayer has reignited a meditation practice stalled from a bad retreat experience years ago. LLMs didn’t give me anything I wasn’t giving them, they just acted as a mirror and helped bootstrap a weird interest I have that I’m now sharing with friends.
I also use LLMs in a very limited way when writing software:
1. As a rubber duck, and often I don’t even click enter, I figure out what I needed by writing it down.
2. For explorations of new concepts I’m not yet familiar with, like a glorified search engine.