> The internet just made all of that knowledge much easier to access, with the time/cost/distance dependency being removed.
Yes, but I don't know what point this is supposed to make, though. LLMs lowered certain costs in an extreme way.
You could always have become a plumber in order to negotiate with plumbers. The reason you didn't is because the investment to become a plumber was more than you were likely to get the price lowered (or to save by doing the work yourself), and you would have to anticipate your needs before they came up. The people who did become plumbers set up (or joined) a business and marketed themselves so they were negotiating with a lot of people over a lot of jobs, making the investment worth it.
People who invested the time to learn plumbing traded with other people who also concentrated their investments into a few things (but different things), and together, made civilization.
> Does an LLM really change what COULD have always been done, or just make it more accessible for those of us who do/want to have the tool?
I'm trying to figure out if you were arguing with somebody who said that it was IMPOSSIBLE to learn the things that people clearly know how to do. Changing arguments into existence proofs has always made them easy to refute; I'm not willing to say that it's impossible for pigs to fly, it's just not cost effective. AI has clearly made it cheaper to obtain the knowledge negotiate with plumbers about a specific plumbing problem that just came up in your life than watching hundreds of hours of This Old House, buying your own tools, and practicing.
Yes, but I don't know what point this is supposed to make, though. LLMs lowered certain costs in an extreme way.
You could always have become a plumber in order to negotiate with plumbers. The reason you didn't is because the investment to become a plumber was more than you were likely to get the price lowered (or to save by doing the work yourself), and you would have to anticipate your needs before they came up. The people who did become plumbers set up (or joined) a business and marketed themselves so they were negotiating with a lot of people over a lot of jobs, making the investment worth it.
People who invested the time to learn plumbing traded with other people who also concentrated their investments into a few things (but different things), and together, made civilization.
> Does an LLM really change what COULD have always been done, or just make it more accessible for those of us who do/want to have the tool?
I'm trying to figure out if you were arguing with somebody who said that it was IMPOSSIBLE to learn the things that people clearly know how to do. Changing arguments into existence proofs has always made them easy to refute; I'm not willing to say that it's impossible for pigs to fly, it's just not cost effective. AI has clearly made it cheaper to obtain the knowledge negotiate with plumbers about a specific plumbing problem that just came up in your life than watching hundreds of hours of This Old House, buying your own tools, and practicing.