The fact that LLMs haven't come up with anything "novel" would be a serious puzzle - as the article claims - only if they were thinking, reasoning, being creative, etc. If they aren't doing anything of the sort, it'd be the only thing you'd expect.
So it's a bit of an anti-climactic solution to the puzzle but: maybe the naysayers were right and they're not thinking at all, or doing any of the other anthropomorphic words being marketed to users, and we've simply all been dragged along by a narrative that's very seductive to tech types (the computer gods will rise!).
It'd be a boring outcome, after the countless gallons of digital ink spilled on the topic the last years, but maybe they'll come to be accepted as "normal software", and not god-like, in the end. A medium to large improvement in some areas, and anywhere from minimal to pointless to harmful in others. And all for the very high cost of all the funding and training and data-hoovering that goes in to them, not to mention the opportunity cost of all the things we humans could have been putting money into and didn't.
So it's a bit of an anti-climactic solution to the puzzle but: maybe the naysayers were right and they're not thinking at all, or doing any of the other anthropomorphic words being marketed to users, and we've simply all been dragged along by a narrative that's very seductive to tech types (the computer gods will rise!).
It'd be a boring outcome, after the countless gallons of digital ink spilled on the topic the last years, but maybe they'll come to be accepted as "normal software", and not god-like, in the end. A medium to large improvement in some areas, and anywhere from minimal to pointless to harmful in others. And all for the very high cost of all the funding and training and data-hoovering that goes in to them, not to mention the opportunity cost of all the things we humans could have been putting money into and didn't.