alt Hacker NewsWe don't know that. We don't know if this particular kind of tool can do "useful" things without also developing the ability to write a sonnet. And they are absolutely a frontier. I am not suggesting we should continue building them just because they are, there are many technologies which could have been built had we thrown the amount of resources we have here and there is a case to be made for not doing it at the pace we are or if at all. But we can do that without diminishing what exists.
I just mean the business case is much more likely to come from treating it like a tool than a proto-diety. Frontier of business, not frontier of impressive demo. Also, would argue they aren't frontier of research, in that a research frontier expands in more directions than just the latest hot thing in silicon valley. See also, LeCun, Chollet, etc. "These labs aren't the entirety of the frontier" would have been more accurate. And any of those frontier directions could be the next hot thing.