The fundamental assumption under all of software engineering is: "computers don't think like humans do".
They can process 2 megabytes of C sources, but not 2 sentences of natural language instructions. They find it easy to multiply 10-digit numbers but not to tell a picture of a dog from one of a cat. Computers are inhuman, in a very fundamental way. No natural language understanding, no pattern recognition, no common sense.
Machine learning was working to undermine that old assumption for a long time. But LLMs took a sledgehammer to it. Their capabilities are genuinely closer to "what humans can usually do" than to "what computers can usually do", despite them running on computers. It's a breakthrough.
They can process 2 megabytes of C sources, but not 2 sentences of natural language instructions. They find it easy to multiply 10-digit numbers but not to tell a picture of a dog from one of a cat. Computers are inhuman, in a very fundamental way. No natural language understanding, no pattern recognition, no common sense.
Machine learning was working to undermine that old assumption for a long time. But LLMs took a sledgehammer to it. Their capabilities are genuinely closer to "what humans can usually do" than to "what computers can usually do", despite them running on computers. It's a breakthrough.