I promise this question is asked in good faith. I do not currently see the point of generative AI and I want to understand why there’s hype. There are ethical concerns but we’ll ignore ethics for the question.
In creative works like writing or art, it feels soulless and poor quality. In programming at best it’s a shortcut to avoid deeper learning, at worst it spits out garbage code that you spend more time debugging than if you had just written it by yourself.
When I see AI ads directed towards individuals the selling point is convenience. But I would feel robbed of the human experience using AI in place of human interaction.
So what’s the point of it all?
Idea generation.
E.g., I asked an LLM client for interactive lessons for teaching 4th graders about aerodynamics, esp related to how birds fly. It came back with 98% amazing suggestions that I had to modify only slightly.
A work colleague asked an LLM client for wedding vow ideas to break through writer’s block. The vows they ended up using were 100% theirs, but the AI spit out something on paper to get them started.
Those are just ideas that were previously “generated” by humans though, that the LLM learned