You, like JVL, are confusing technology with technology's societal implications. It's the societal implications of AI that JVL is concerned with; but he assumes wrongly that his fears concerning the implications for society of this latest class of AI applications can be meaningfully compared with an expert's encapsulation of one of the technologies--large language models--that itself undergirds these applications. In doing this, he misreads a description of the technology as a "thesis" about its implications for society. This lack of technical expertise leads JVL to paraphrase the expert's encapsulation of the technology in a way that trivializes it (simple guesswork): then, rightly seeing generative AI's NON-trivial implications for society, he worries that the expert isn't alarmed where he should be. The point I'd hoped to make was that only if we avoid this category mistake can we take a sober look at what the technology can and, crucially, cannot do; only by doing this can we achieve a clear-eyed view of what sectors of society will be disrupted. Only experts can help us avoid the fear that ignorance engenders; we'll need experts in economics, to be sure, but we'll also need to recognize technical expertise in AI for what it is.
You, like JVL, are confusing technology with technology's societal implications. It's the societal implications of AI that JVL is concerned with; but he assumes wrongly that his fears concerning the implications for society of this latest class of AI applications can be meaningfully compared with an expert's encapsulation of one of the technologies--large language models--that itself undergirds these applications. In doing this, he misreads a description of the technology as a "thesis" about its implications for society. This lack of technical expertise leads JVL to paraphrase the expert's encapsulation of the technology in a way that trivializes it (simple guesswork): then, rightly seeing generative AI's NON-trivial implications for society, he worries that the expert isn't alarmed where he should be. The point I'd hoped to make was that only if we avoid this category mistake can we take a sober look at what the technology can and, crucially, cannot do; only by doing this can we achieve a clear-eyed view of what sectors of society will be disrupted. Only experts can help us avoid the fear that ignorance engenders; we'll need experts in economics, to be sure, but we'll also need to recognize technical expertise in AI for what it is.