People have been through a lot of hype cycles and the grandiose claims of what AI/LLMs could be / "superintellegence" etc are a complete distraction from a pretty impressive tech accomplishment. Too few people wonder if the wins we got are worth it even if we hit a wall trying to achieve "AGI". And the real world impacts with electricity and billionaires running around with no guardrails are starting to slowly come to light. It sure looks a lot like the last hype cycle where we were promised a global currency without government intervention... lol. Do you remember the part where people took out loans to buy cartoon apes?
(I personally/philosophically don't believe AGI is a natural next step for LLMs as I don't believe the English language alone which training is so heavy on encapsulates all of human ability, rather it's very honed in on English speaking countries/cultures - I also don't believe humans are very capable of creating derivative products with capabilities greater than their own - we can barely make progress on what really causes mental illness[1] - how can we claim to understand our minds so well we can replicate their functionality?)