I mean, Our Lord and Saviour The Almighty Blockchain (and its offshoot technologies, like DAOs) worked, for some value of worked; it just wasn't particularly useful. I'd put LLMs largely in the same bucket for now.
> I know a few small companies that have legitimately let people go without even having a proper replacement.
In terms of collateral damage, blockchain nonsense is probably still winning, at least for now, though its victims were often at least somewhat complicit in their own destruction.
I wouldn't be as harsh on LLMs as I was on blockchain. Blockchain didn't solve a single problem I had or understood. In contrast, LLMs already solve a few boring and annoying problems for me, which I find quite valuable.