Is that because anyone is finding real use for it, or is it that more and more people and companies are using it which is speeding up the rat race, and if "I" don't use it, then can't keep up with the rat race. Many companies are implementing it because it's trendy and cool and helps their valuation

I use LMMs all the time. At a bare minimum they vastly outperform standard web search. Claude is awesome at helping me think through complex text and research problems. Not even serious errors on references to major work in medical research. I still check but FDR is reasonably low—-under 0.2.