Holy false-equivalency, Batman! The definitions of "useless toy / lifechanging tool" are _not_ changing over time (or, at least, not over the timescale being explored here), whereas the expectations and requirements of processing power of a phone are.
But in fact they are changing over time -- this is an expectations treadmill. When you get something newer and better, it highlights the flaws in what you had before.
That is true _in general_, but not in this specific case (hence why I specified "not over the timescale being explored here"). A modern cigarette-lighter would indeed have been a life-changing tool to a caveman but is indeed disposable junk today.
The point being made by the original comment (with which I agree) was that many criteria-for-usefulness - primarily that of reliability or a lack of hallucination - have remained static; with successive generations of tools being (falsely) claimed to meet them, but then abandoned when the next hype-train comes along.
I certainly agree that _some_ aspects of AI models are indeed improving (often drastically!) over time (speed, price, supported formats, history/context, etc.) - but they still _all_ fall _drastically_ short on the key core requirement that is required in order to make them Actually Useful. "X is better than Y" does not imply "where Y failed to be useful, X now succeeds".
