What did you find most interesting or surprising about the article's discussion of LLMs?

The most interesting parts to me were:

1. The implications on API development.

"Communication between computers has a lot of friction, despite all of our best efforts. Communication between different parts of the same computer, or even within the same application, often have friction! We might have some data over here, and an API over there, and with just a bit of hustle, we could get the two to talk to each other. But philosophers don’t hustle, and so our current applications can’t do it. "

2. So called 'Matching problems' are an elegant abstraction to many kinds of computer / software assisted processes

"We can think of inter-application communication as a kind of trade, and the capacity for specific transactions to occur as being a matching problem. Matching theory describes “the formation of mutually beneficial relationships over time”, typically concerning economic relations between people, but the principle is applicable to relations between computer systems too. Matching is not just about an employee’s skills and and employer’s salary offer, but whether they can find each other, the influence of geography, language, social networks, and so on. If there is a job available, and a person willing and able to do it, but that person remains unemployed and the vacancy unfilled, then this is attributed to “friction” in the job market—something must have got in the way of the person taking the job."