Not sure if these are the best stats to illustrate the point, but ChatGPT was released November 2022, 2.5 years ago, and they currently claim ~1 billion users [1]

By comparison, iPhone sales were something like 30 million over the same time period, June 2007 through 2009. [2]

In other words, what took ChatGPT several months took smartphones several years.

Of course there are problems with the comparison (iPhones are expensive, but many people bought each version of the iPhone making the raw user count go down, Sam Altman is exaggerating, people use LLMs other than ChatGPT, blah blah blah), so maybe let's not concentrate on this particular analogy. The point is: even a very skeptical view of how many people use LLMs day-to-day has to acknowledge they are relatively popular, for better or worse.

I think we're better served trying to keep the cat from scratching us rather than trying to put it back in the bag. Ham-fisted megalomaniac CEOs forcing a dangerous technology on workers before we all understand the danger is a big problem, that's for sure. To the original point, "AI-first is the new RTO", there's definitely some juice there, but it's not because the general public is anti-AI.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/martineparis/2025/04/12/chatgpt...

[2] https://www.globaldata.com/data-insights/technology--media-a...

> did your boss ever have to send you a memo demanding that you use a smartphone

Yes, there were tons of jobs that required you to have a smartphone, and still do. I remember my second job, they'd give out Blackberries - debatably not smartphones, but still - to the managers and require work communication on them. I know this was true for many companies.

This isn't the perfect analogy anyway, since one major reason companies did this was to increase security, while forcing AI onto begrudging workers feels like it could have the opposite effect. The commonality is efficiency, or at least the perception of it by upper management.

One example I can think of where there was worker pushback but it makes total sense is the use of electronic medical records. Doctors/nurses originally didn't want to, and there are certainly a lot of problems with the tech, but I don't think anyone is suggesting now that we should go back to paper.

You can make the argument that an "AI first" mandate will backfire, but the notion that workers will collectively gravitate towards new tech is not true in general.

I read Atlas Shrugged as an impressionable young teen, and developed some pretty horrible notions about society and morality (and literary technique) as a result. Of course I saw the error of my ways, in no small part by reading other books!

Don't get me wrong, books-as-propaganda isn't necessarily bad. Animal Farm, 1984, To Kill a Mockingbird... These are brilliant but are also such effective forms of propaganda that even mentioning their titles is a form of propaganda in itself.

So in the public consciousness it's like (NFTs, meme coins, metaverse, AI)

When I think it's more like (internet, smartphones, AI)

We'll see who's right in a few years I guess. But I'll +1 your view that plenty of people put AI in the first group, I know a few myself.

Should we let the kids who cheat using AI drop by the wayside, never learning a thing for themselves? Or should we do the same for kids who, for whatever reason, just will not do school work outside a classroom? Maybe it works really well for some subjects and not others? Or only for some age ranges? What about the students like you, and there are probably a lot of them, where it would be unfair to judge their abilities at specific times in specific settings?

I guess the reason I bring it up now is that AI has tipped it over the edge, where cheating is now so easy and effective that it is starting to tempt kids who would not otherwise cheat.

My point is: you can't say LLMs are a dangerous tool and call them vapourware at the same time. It's a contradiction in terms.

LLMs have some very important downsides, and I fully agree that they are dangerous, but we should dispel the notion that they don't have positive use cases. That leaves the benefits on the table, while the bad actors will continue with their destruction anyways.

Anyway, my original point was indeed just about the semantics of the word "vapourware", which if I'm interpreting the author correctly, would be better replaced with "malware" (not that I agree with such a stance).

How much corporate funding did Bernie get?

Why do you think capital supported Kamala? Especially in hindsight?

And your joke about left vs right sponsorship of streamers has a very soft underbelly, which, if you don't know about it yet, kind of tells the whole story right there.

Is it useless or not? If it's vapourware, why would you care if the other side uses it? If the far right is using it successfully, then by definition it is not vapourware, right?

Not quite. Flipped classroom means more instruction outside of class time and less homework.

> This is called "proctored exams" and it's been pretty common in universities for a few centuries. None of this addresses the real issue

Proctored exams is part of it. In-class assignments is another. Asynchronous instruction is another.

And yes, it addresses the issue. Students can use AI however they see fit, to learn or to accomplish tasks or whatever, but for actual assessment of ability they cannot use AI. And it leaves the door open for "open-book" exams where the use of AI is allowed, just like a calculator and textbook/cheat-sheet is allowed for some exams.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom

Basically, a student's marks depend mostly (only?) on what they can do in a setting where AI is verifiably unavailable. It means less class time for instruction, but students have a tutor in their pocket anyway.

I've also talked with a bunch of teachers and a couple admins about this. They agree it's a huge problem. By the same token, they are using AI to create their lesson plans and assignments! Not fully of course, they edit the output using their expertise. But it's funny to imagine AI completing an AI assignment with the humans just along for the ride.

The point is, if you actually want to know what a student is capable of, you need to watch them doing it. Assigning homework has lost all meaning.