In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…
The early internet connected personal computing together. It built on technology that was democratizing.
LLMs appear to be democratizing, but it is not. The enshittification is proceeding much more rapidly. No one wants to be left behind on the land grab. Many of us remember the rise of the world wide web, and perhaps even personal computing that made the internet mainstream.
I am excited to hear the effort of the Swiss models being trained, though it is a step behind. I remember people talking about how fine tuning will accelerate advances out in the open, and that large companies such as Google can’t keep up with that. Perhaps.
I’ve been diving into history. The Industrial Revolution was a time of rapid progress when engines accelerated the development of cheaper access to fuels, more powerful engines. We were able to afford abundance for a middle class, but we also had enshittification then too.
While there is a _propensity_ for enshittification, I for one don’t see it as inevitable, and neither do I think an AI future is inevitable.