LLMs are mediocre. And that is enough, most of the time.

LLMs are mediocre.

That is not always a criticism. Most of the time, mediocre is enough. In many parts of life, I am not especially good, not especially informed, or simply do not care enough to go deep. There, a mediocre answer is useful. It is often better than what I would have produced on my own.

The problem is that this changes completely when I know the subject well

Then I can see the weakness immediately. The answer sounds right, but it does not really go anywhere. It rearranges familiar things. It rarely produces judgement. To get something genuinely valuable, I have to fight for it. Sometimes I get more from half an hour with paper than from hours with the machine.

That may be the real measure of these tools.

They help most where I am weakest. They disappoint most where I am strongest.

So the question may not be whether LLMs are good.

It may be where mediocre stops being enough.