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I’d love it if for once someone on here saying LLMs are some life changing apparatus would give a single example.
My wife was diagnosed with several chronic conditions in the last year. AI tools both diagnosed her before a doctor did (which helped us find the right docs to care for her by figuring out what to look for). One of her conditions (Mast Cell Activation Syndrome) comes with a ton of dietary restrictions. Its helped us immensely in planning meals and identifing food triggers. All of this would have possible with out AI as a tool but would have led to much more pain and suffering and likely taken much longer to figure it out. It's easy to dismiss (especially given the hallucinations) but it's been legitimatly life changing over the last year
I can give some recent examples.

- Significantly increased my productivity as a software engineer.

- Using it daily for Chinese-English translation. Significantly better than pre-LLM translation software. Also, great at teaching grammar, nuances, etc.

- General Q&A. Like "Googling" but much faster. This is probably the most common use case for me.

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We have some exotic chicks the kids picked out, and 4 were going to die of brooder pneumonia.

An LLM correctly diagnosed it, and figure out that we could treat them with Nutri-drench Sheep Supplement, since Tractor Supply was sold out of the chicken version, and they are very similar.

Of course it then immediately recommended we use hemp bedding that would kill them a different way, but the saleswoman sanity checked all of the above,

100% survival rate.

Everyone’s thriving. Chickens would follow the medical advice again, I guess.

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I used Gemini to fix my new boiler by taking various photos and asking it for help. It saved me a plumber call-out (this was a user error issue, nothing safety critical).

Gemini also told me about some obscure procedures to fix my wedding paperwork after it’d been submitted with typos.

> - Significantly increased my productivity as a software engineer

I don't understand this. It increased productivity of every developer in the western world, so it didn't really give you an advantage. Your output is more valuable, but your colleagues' output is more valuable too, and your competitors' output too, and so on. So you're doing more things at the same salary and it's not like your company or your employer is making more money than usual or awarding you more eoy bonus. If your "life-change" is "I'm writing more code" without any other advantage (and with the possible disadvantage of your role changing, or being at risk), why is it desirable?

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From experience, whenever someone asks in that particular tone and is actually provided with examples, they proceed to bend over backwards to "prove" that it's secretly not much of an improvement at all/AI psychosis/a mirage/actually harmful/<insert other substitute for "I don't like it therefore you must be wrong" reason here>.
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Some guy vibe coded a tasks app client that I really like. Not life changing but I couldn't find one that suited my needs since de-iPhoning before this one.
Immediate medical and childcare advice from LLM are pretty life changing.

Interpreting reports, avoiding drug interactions, or knowing when to seek medical care. And before people object- I can literally use the same LLM my doctor does to check these things, without waiting 2 weeks for an appointment.

I helped my parents work through bacterial culture results when my dad was hospitalized with sepsis, and had them ask their doctor for specific follow up tests.

I rebuilt my gas furnace and fixed my dishwasher with AI as an assistant.

Those aren't the fun parts tho. My favorite is touring art museums ancient historical sites with an LLM guide. It can give me a short academic essay about every artist, painting, or artifact. It can pull out details quirky stories about the history that I specifically would find interesting.

I cant recommend this enough. Its like visiting with a 10 PhD docents in art history.

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Try the prompt to opus 4.8:

does "das man" know they are part of the crowd?