You ask us to consider AI as just the latest inhuman infrastructure of modernity, alongside markets, bureaucracies, and representative government. Very well: the significance of LLMs, is that they would allow "modernity" to dispense with human beings entirely - the role of humans in all those social institutions could be completely filled by AIs, and they could continue to function.
This article made me think of an analogy I'll have to give further thought to:
From the point of view of Earth's entire ecosystem, the dangerous Shoggoth has been the evolution of human intelligence.
You ask us to consider AI as just the latest inhuman infrastructure of modernity, alongside markets, bureaucracies, and representative government. Very well: the significance of LLMs, is that they would allow "modernity" to dispense with human beings entirely - the role of humans in all those social institutions could be completely filled by AIs, and they could continue to function.