I've been interested in this technology since I saw Eliza at a museum when I was teenager. I'd been reading science fiction for a long time, still do, and the idea of a communicative computer system was really cool. Still is.

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In the beginning of the current century, after moving to Germany,  I took some linguistics courses at the University of Marburg. One of my professor's specialties was machine/human interface.

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When Siri, Alexa, and their gang came out, (I think it's better for everyone concerned if we let Clippy rest in peace) I enthusiastically jumped on the bandwagon. So, I could turn lights on and off, ask for the weather or sports scores, and perform a few other useful but not altogether scintillating tasks. I still ask Alexa to play music for me from time to time, and turn on the plug for my media center. But the novelty wore off a long time ago.

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Now, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Claude, Bard/Gemini and Microsoft's CoPilot burst on the scene.

Once again, this sci-fi Ur-nerd jumped in with both feet.

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And the time-honored "your mileage may vary" caveat reigns supreme.

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I've reawakened an interest in programming (Python) and that's certainly a positive aspect. I've learned that these LLMs are better at helping people code than they are at most other tasks. Because they're computer systems, natürlich.

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However, the hype that they are currently marinating in seems to me to be cooked up by an economic requirement, not a functional requirement. If several of the largest companies in the world dump tens of billions of dollars into a service, they are fully capable of generating enough interest in that service to lure enterprises and individuals to pay for said very expensive service.

I'm OK with that, it's how late-stage capitalism works.

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So unless you want a computer to create a meme for you (no judgement) you're better off using your native intelligence to interface with the world. Or, use it to edit your code, it's really good at that.

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I'll be posting more musings here as I go along.