A smartphone is also a tool. If you could have a smartphone without all the compulsive checking, endless scrolling, etc. it'd be incredible.

But the smartphone bundles the productive (but not addictive) capabilities with addictive, anxiety-causing wastes of time. The latter consume the vast majority of time spent on phones.

LLMs have the same problem: they bundle so many capabilities that they enable our worst tendencies. I can use it in a precise manner and reserve the decision-making, cognitively demanding work for myself. But realistically that's not what most people are going to do, and even those with the best intentions will frequently produce AI slop because they're in a rush or whatever.