Sure, it could be positive in some distant future utopia.
But the short-term impacts here and now are really, really bad. People are getting hurt (through water consumption, vibe-coded security disasters, IP theft, data center pollution, loss of job security and therefore healthcare in the US, LLM psychosis, inability to find reliable information, etc.) We're not actually obligated to sacrifice these people on the altar of "progress". We can slow down! When our society is capable of even somewhat protecting us from these harms, then maybe I'll stop being an LLM hater.
We absolutely have negative cases - but these do not outweigh the positive cases. There is no distant utopia - right now, people are becoming extremely capable because of their personal use of AI - there is also a position on the other side of the curve, where people are becoming more incompetent because of AI.
But guess what, it has always been so with technology - and we are only here and now because the positive use of it overshadows the negative use of it, whether that 'it' is the wheel, or AI.
I choose not to be an LLM hater, but to also not be an LLM customer - simply because I do not want to reward other humans who are thwarting the freedom of information. I'd much rather live in a society where everyone can study anything than one which requires permission to do anything even remotely interesting from the perspective of applied information. I suspect most would too, or at least that's the hope - because, otherwise, the distant utopia you dream of isn't of any consequence...
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