I tend to agree with the author, but I think the real problem with hype is the opportunity cost. Somewhere along the way we bought into this idea that "the promise of X" is worth more than "the reality of X". The longer the hype goes on - which is to say the longer it takes to demonstrate the hype is actually reality - the more people become more heavily invested in it. If the hype never materialises, you basically b…
Learned some classical ASP to join the web dev hype? Well, tough luck. The hype was good but materialized in another vessel. If you learned enough fundamentals, you could still jump ship.
But what are the fundamentals for LLM? Hype rarely reveals them right away.
For LLMs, tough luck. You can't learn fundamentals with your toy PC yet. You need to be rich and have server grade hardware. Also, you cannot buy server grade hardware because it is out of stock.
But that's ok, few people will learn it and I will look from the sidelines until an acessible opportunity reveals itself.
If it doesn't get acessible, well, it probably will be some niche tech like COBOL. Pays awesomelly, but not my jam. That is winning for some people.
So many possible scenarios. You or someone else will try to expand and deflect on a single one, won't you? I know you will. No crystal ball, just intuition.
So, I will fucking learn what I can learn, what I like to learn, and I will hope I can survive on what it pays. That is winning in my books (at least on such narrow economic definition of it).
I like LLMs, but the good part is in training. Just using it is kind of... being an user. I can do that without faking as if it were truly learning it.
You are presenting an economic angle. I won't ignore it, but there is more to it for me.
Premise, reality, etc. So maleable.