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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#301

Post by jillesvangurp »

LLMs are here, they aren't going away. Therefore they are part of our future. The real question is what else is in our future and whether LLMs are all we need. I think the answer to that is a solid no and the people phrasing the future in faster/better LLMs are probably missing the point as much as people thinking of cars as coaches with faster horses.

That future isn't inevitable but highly likely given on the trajectory we're on. But you can't specify a timeline with certainty for what amounts to some highly tricky and very much open research questions related to this that lots of people are working on. But predicting that they are going to come up completely empty handed seems even more foolish. They'll figure out something. And it might surprise us. LLMs certainly did.

It's not inevitable that they'll come up with something of course. But at this point they'd have to be fundamentally wrong about quite a few things. And even if they are, there's no guarantee that they wouldn't just figure that out and address that. They'll come up with something. But it probably won't be just faster horses.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#303

Post by stiray »

I completely agree with author on LLMs. I consider AI as stock inflating noise, like nosql databases (...) were. The nosql ended, after all the hype, as sometimes usable.

I am typically buying ebooks. When I read it and figure out that ebook is rare jewel, I also buy hardcover if available.

Shoshana Zuboff’s, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is one of those hardcovers.

Recommending reading it.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#304

Post by [deleted] »

imiric wrote: post #112
Animats wrote: post #46

There may be an "LLM Winter" as people discover that LLMs can't be trusted to do anything. Look for frantic efforts by companies to offload responsibility for LLM mistakes onto consumers. We've got to have something that has solid "I don't know" and "I don't know how to do this" outputs. We're starting to see reports of LLM usage having negative value for programmers, even though they think it's helping. Too much eff…

> Look for frantic efforts by companies to offload responsibility for LLM mistakes onto consumers. Not just by companies. We see this from enthusiastic consumers as well, on this very forum. Or it might just be astroturfing, it's hard to tell. The mantra is that in order to extract value from LLMs, the user must have a certain level of knowledge and skill of how to use them. "Prompt engineering", now reframed as "con…

[deleted]

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#305

Post by rsanek »

lmm wrote: post #253
killerstorm wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"put your money where your mouth is" is generally a good thing.

"Talking your book" is seen as a bad thing, especially when not properly disclosed.

is that really a problem? feel like those working on ai are not shy about it

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#306

Post by sgt101 »

killerstorm wrote: post #192
fendy3002 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs need significant optimization or we get significant improvement on computing power while keeping the energy cost the same. It's similar with smartphone, when at the start it's not feasible because of computing power, and now we have one that can rival 2000s notebooks. LLMs is too trivial to be expensive EDIT: I presented the statement wrongly. What I mean is the use case for LLM are trivial things, it shouldn't…

LLM can give you thousands of lines of perfectly working code for less than 1 dollar. How is that trivial or expensive?

Looking up a project on github, downloading it and using it can give you 10000 lines of perfectly working code for free.

Also, when I use Cursor I have to watch it like a hawk or it deletes random bits of code that are needed or adds in extra code to repair imaginary issues. A good example was that I used it to write a function that inverted the axis on some data that I wanted to present differently, and then added that call into one of the functions generating the data I needed.

Of course, somewhere in the pipeline it added the call into every data generating function. Cue a very confused 20 minutes a week later when I was re-running some experiments.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#307

Post by snickmy »

An axiom of inevitabilism, especially among the highest echelons, is that you end up making it a reality. It’s the kind of belief that shapes reality itself. In simple terms: the fact that the Googles, Anthropics, and OpenAIs of the world have a strong interest in making LLMs the way AI pans out will most likely ensure that LLMs become the dominant paradigm — until someone else, with equal leverage, comes along to disrupt them.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#308

Post by mns »

eric-burel wrote: post #133
lsy wrote: post #63

I think two things can be true simultaneously: 1. LLMs are a new technology and it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle with that. It's difficult to imagine a future where they don't continue to exist in some form, with all the timesaving benefits and social issues that come with them. 2. Almost three years in, companies investing in LLMs have not yet discovered a business model that justifies the massive expen…

Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet. Using an LLM UI like open ai is like we just figured fire and you use it to warm you hands (still impressive when you think about it, but not worth the burns), while LLM development is about building car engines (here is you return on investment).

>evelopers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet.

Which is basically what? The infinite monkey theorem? Brute forcing solutions for problems at huge costs? Somehow people have been tricked to actually embrace and accept that now they have to pay subscriptions from 20$ to 300$ to freaking code? How insane is that, something that was a very low entry point and something that anyone could do, is now being turned into some sort of classist system where the future of code is subscriptions you pay for companies ran by sociopaths who don't care that the world burns around them, as long as their pockets are full.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#309

Post by imiric »

rgoulter wrote: post #216
imiric wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Look for frantic efforts by companies to offload responsibility for LLM mistakes onto consumers. Not just by companies. We see this from enthusiastic consumers as well, on this very forum. Or it might just be astroturfing, it's hard to tell. The mantra is that in order to extract value from LLMs, the user must have a certain level of knowledge and skill of how to use them. "Prompt engineering", now reframed as "con…

A couple of typical comments about LLMs would be: "This LLM is able to capably output useful snippets of code for Python. That's useful." and "I tried to get an LLM to perform a niche task with a niche language, it performed terribly." I think the right synthesis is that there are some tasks the LLMs are useful at, some which they're not useful at; practically, it's useful to be able to know what they're useful for.…

> Or, if we trust that LLMs are useful for all tasks, then it's practically useful to know what they're not good at.

The thing is that there's no way to objectively measure this. Benchmarks are often gamed, and like a sibling comment mentioned, the output is not stable.

Also, everyone has different criteria for what constitutes "good". To someone with little to no programming experience, LLMs would feel downright magical. Experienced programmers, or any domain expert for that matter, would be able to gauge the output quality much more accurately. Even among the experienced group, there are different levels of quality criteria. Some might be fine with overlooking certain issues, or not bother checking the output at all, while others have much higher standards of quality.

The problem is when any issues that are pointed out are blamed on the user, instead of the tool. Or even worse: when the issues are acknowledged, but are excused as "this is the way these tools work."[1,2]. It's blatant gaslighting that AI companies love to promote for obvious reasons.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483897#44485037

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44483897#44485366

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#310

Post by sshine »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #301

LLMs are here, they aren't going away. Therefore they are part of our future. The real question is what else is in our future and whether LLMs are all we need. I think the answer to that is a solid no and the people phrasing the future in faster/better LLMs are probably missing the point as much as people thinking of cars as coaches with faster horses. That future isn't inevitable but highly likely given on the traje…

A few things that are here:

  - LLMs
  - Cryptocurrencies
  - Mobile phones
Neither are going away, all are part of our future, but not equally.

The inevitabilism argument is that cryptocurrencies were just as hyped a few years ago as LLMs are now, and they're much less here now. So if you have an objection to LLMs being hyped and not wanting to use them, there's a real case they may slide into the background as a curious gimmick, like cryptocurrencies.

LLMs won't have the same fate as cryptocurrencies.

They're immediately useful to a lot of people, unlike cryptocurrencies.

More likely: When VC needs to capture back the money, and subscriptions go to their real level, we'll see 1) very expensive subscriptions for those who vibe, and 2) cheaper models filled with ads for the plebs, embedded into search engines, help desk software, and refrigerators.

LLMs do share one sad aspect with cryptocurrencies on account of being a hype: When the hype settles, because of economic reality, they'll feel shittier because we get the version we can afford: The LLM that replaces a human service worker whose effort was already at rock bottom. The cryptocurrency that resembles a slot machine.

In a utopia that wasn't run by VC money, taking any idea to an extreme for some sustainable reason other than a 10-year value capture plan, we might see some beautiful adoption into society.

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