Why are people arguing sentience and not the fact that this is another attempt to completely remove a sector of the workforce the way Covid was the conduit to remove a complete sector of the outside world? This shit is valued at nearly 200 billion dollars
Because too many people, including self-described leftists, believe in the marketing bullshit that called it "AI" to begin with, which has been a staggering triumph... of marketing bullshit.
I don't want to wander into the weeds with the kind of people that have a "just one more burnt forest bro, just one more dried up lake bro, a sufficiently large dataset will make that one le epic scene in Blade Runner 2049 come true" but it's hard not to when they tend to
at the same time with smug misanthropic put-downs about us emotional fearful Luddite meat computers and all that.
Yes, the important part is that this latest means of production is so far a highly wasteful solution in search of a problem... though it did find one problem of the bourgeoisie that it can potentially solve: removing workers entirely from the equation wherever it's crammed in, no matter how sloppy, unreliable, or even hazardous the results.
Contempt for workers, and people in general, is the point. And it's fucking exhausting when the old horse of "what if the treat printer wakes up and is a cyberspace waifu that loves me unconditionally" gets trotted out... which is intentional marketing bullshit by the hype pushers.