I used to think this. I have come to realize that is more likely to hinder progress. Two examplars why I believe this:
I have an extended family member who does plans for radiation therapy. Management has been requiring them to evaluate using an AI product to create the plans. He was actually pretty excited to do this because he is kind of tech nerd. It turns out it is actually quite good at producing plans for most patients using approaches that were popular five years ago -- guess when the thing was trained. You can say that it will be good at current plans once it gets trained on them. If humans keep doing the plans, the plans 5 years from now will be even better. If LLM-based AI does it, they will freeze at the current level forever. We are a long way from an AI that can do them now AND advance the field.
Twenty years ago, there was a big thing about an AI that could outperform radiologists reading certain x-rays. It turned out to only be true for a pre-selected subset of X-rays. And it hasn't been able to close the gap significantly in that twenty years. The existing technologies will always asymptotically approach the training set, but never exceed it. And every increment step closer costs more than the previous step. Way more. This is kind of fundamental to the technology.
As I have said other places, it is possible that someone else will come up with a new technology that will leapfrog the current stuff. Except every possible cent is being put into the LLM bubble. So there is less progress being made elsewhere than at any time in my memory, which goes back through several hype cycles. And the backlash against the overhyping of LLM-based AI will almost completely rule out real work in AI for a generation.
My own research was generally no more than brushing against AI, although I did work on two projects that were more at the heart, I had left those well before this hype cycle began in earnest. So this is not personal in that sense. I just resent the PT Barnum's of the current generation setting the field back decades for their personal enrichment and fame.
