Large language models are currently everyone’s solution to everything. The technology’s versatility is part of its appeal: the use cases for generative AI seem both huge and endless. But then you use the stuff, and not enough of it works very well. And you wonder what we’re really accomplishing here.

On this episode of The Vergecast, Nilay rejoins the show full of thoughts about the current state of AI — particularly after spending a summer trying to get his smart home to work. But before we get to that, we talk about our new ad-free podcast option, which launched this week! (If you’re a subscriber, go to your account settings to find the feeds for all of our shows.) We also talk about Apple’s new M5-powered MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro, and wonder how big a deal a chip bump really is.

After that, it’s time to talk AI. We talk about the state of AI assistants, which are clearly the killer consumer app for LLMs, and which no one can build particularly well yet. ChatGPT and the others are fun to use! But that’s not the same as being useful – especially not in the omnipresent, all-knowing way we actually require. The ideal product here is both obvious and tantalizing, but it doesn’t feel like we’re close to it. Unless you’re really excited about talking to your laptop.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, first in podcast and gadget news:

And in the lightning round: