The way I see it, LLMs are a direct attack on friction designed into human processes.
- Filing a lawsuit
- Applying to a university
- Tailoring a cover-letter for a job application
- Writing to a local government body to complain about street lighting
- Writing a homework essay as part of a class at school
Things like this have always, supposedly, been available to everyone - but preparing those documents and jumping through the necessary hoops has been hard enough that the flow of applications has stayed at a manageable level.
LLMs destroy that balance. The volume of applications goes through the roof. Now we have to redesign all of these decades- or centuries- old human processes, without any warning that we would have to do so.