Speaking of that "obviously impressive" line, I'm getting really tired of something like that line seemingly needing to be included by anyone doing any criticism of agentic systems. The most common form of it is "these models are obviously useful" midway through a bunch of arguments about environment, data provenance, skill atrophy, or even correctness issues.

It's just really weird. Why does everyone feel the need to equivocate? "I worry about genocide and the environmental impact of radiation from nuclear bombs. Obviously, they are very useful for annihilating entire cities, certainly. But are we really atrophying our ability to invade with infantry?"

I want to tell these people to just cut it out. It's demeaning to their own position.