Come on. It reads all the code in the world; then, you ask it to produce code; then, it gladly writes out something "new" which is a synthesis of what is out there, often with direct copying. It's more than reading.
Which Hamming quote, btw, do you refer to? I think he mostly talks about talking with other "smart" people, and communicating what you are working on a lot (like giving talks, etc.). But, this doesn't read like much of a case for the humanities, per se.
You know, there seems to be a hidden thought here that it's either just (A) let the Founders do their thing and of course they will provide great value and happen to become billionaires as a result or (B) tax those crooked cheaters who are taking our wealth.
There could be alternatives. For example, laws that ensure ownership of said companies is more widely held, so that the wealth is more evenly distributed among those who created it, for instance.
I read this differently: they are actually seeing that it's hard to keep advancing frontier models, and now are moving the goal posts so that when they start getting evaluated more harshly, they can point to something like this.
"Links No Longer Mean Credibility" - did they used to? I mean, I mostly agree with this article but a person could have written this about the internet. I remember people linking to all sorts of random web pages and using that as a source of credibility.
I'm amazed by all the "people hate AI therefore this won't get anywhere". This is a first (perhaps real) attempt to envision what a desktop of the future looks like assuming AI progress continues. If I'm Apple, I'm very concerned about this, because it is the type of thing that will be tough for them to compete with if Google can pull it off. A traditional computer experience may be very different in a few years, and Google may suddenly be the company that can pull this all together...
Really? I see this all the time. Maybe I'm going to all the wrong places. I see "couples" on their phones, I see groups of friends on their phones, etc., etc. Maybe different parts of the country / world?