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LLM Inevitabilism

tomrenner.com

331–340 of 1001 posts

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#331
AI is not inevitable, because technological progress in general is not inevitable. It is shapeable by economic incentives just like everything else. It can be ground into powder by resource starvation.

We've long known that certain forms of financial bounties levied upon scientists working at the frontier of sciences we want to freeze in place work effectively with a minimum of policing and international cooperation. If a powerful country is willing to be a jerk (heavens!) and allow these kinds of bounties to be turned in even on extranationals, you don't need the international cooperation. But you do get a way to potentially kickstart a new Nash equilibrium that keeps itself going as soon as other countries adopt the same bounty-based policy.

This mechanism has been floating around for at least a decade now. It's not news. Even the most inevitable seeming scientific developments can be effectively rerouted around using it. The question is whether you genuinely, earnestly believe what lies beyond the frontier is too dangerous to be let out, and in almost all cases the answer to that should be no.

I post this mostly because inevitabilist arguments will always retain their power so long as you can come up with a coherent profit motive for something to be pursued. You don't get far with good-feeling spiels that amount to plaintive cries in a tornado. You need actual object level proposals on how to make the inevitable evitable.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#332
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 any…

I cannot emphasize how much I agree with this comment. Thank you for writing it, I would never have had written it as well.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#334
post #70

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…

You speak with a passive voice, as if the future is something that happens to you, rather than something that you participate in.

The reality for most people is that at a macro level the future is something that happens to them. They try to participate e.g. through voting, but see no change even on issues a significant majority of 'voters' agree on, regardless of who 'wins' the elections.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet There are thousands of startups doing exactly that right now, why do you think this will work when all evidence points towards it not working? Or why else would it not already have revolutionized everything a year or two ago when everyone started doing this?

Most of them are a bunch of prompts and don't even have actual developers. For the good reason that there is no training system yet and the wording of how you call the people that build these system isn't even there or clearly defined. Local companies haven't even setup a proper internal LLM or at least a contract with a provider. I am in France so probably lagging behind USA a bit especially NY/SF but the word "LLM developer" is just arriving now and mostly under the pressure of isolated developers and companies like me. This feel really really early stage.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#336
post #6

I hate AI. I'm so sick of it. I read a story about 14 year olds that are adopting AI boyfriends. They spend 18 hours a day in conversation with chatbots. Their parents are worried because they are withdrawing from school and losing their friends. I hate second guessing emails that I've read, wondering if my colleagues are even talking to me or if they are using AI. I hate the idea that AI will replace my job. Even if…

You hate AI and want to go outside and stare at a tree? How are posts like this on HACKERnews? What is the point of all these types of posts on a site that is literally about hacking technology?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#337
post #5
post #2

If in 2009 you claimed that the dominance of the smartphone was inevitable, it would have been because you were using one and understood its power, not because you were reframing away our free choice for some agenda. In 2025 I don't think you can really be taking advantage of AI to do real work and still see its mass adaptation as evitable. It's coming faster and harder than any tech in history. As scary as that is w…

Ironically, this is exactly the technique for arguing that the blog mentions. Remember the revolutionary, seemingly inevitable tech that was poised to rewrite how humans thought about transportation? The incredible amounts of hype, the secretive meetings disclosing the device, etc.? That turned out to be the self-balancing scooter known as a Segway?

> Ironically, this is exactly the technique for arguing that the blog mentions.

So? The blog notes that if something is inevitable, then the people arguing against it are lunatics, and so if you can frame something as inevitable then you win the rhetorical upper-hand. It doesn't -- however -- in any way attempt to make the argument that LLMs are _not_ inevitable. This is a subtle straw man: the blog criticizes the rhetorical technique of inevitabilism rather than engaging directly with whether LLMs are genuinely inevitable or not. Pointing out that inevitability can be rhetorically abused doesn't itself prove that LLMs aren't inevitable.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#338
post #70

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…

Are you seriously comparing the internet and LLMs?

You know what's the difference between both?

Internet costs a fraction of LLMs to serve literally everyone in the world. It is universally useful and has continuously become more and more useful since it started.

LLMs are insanely expensive to the point of them having to be sold at a loss to have people using them, while the scope they are promised to cover has narrowed year after year, from "it will automate everything for every job" to "it can write boilerplate code for you if you're a bit lucky and nobody looks at the code review too closely".

The only inevitability when it comes to LLMs is that investments will dry up, the bubble will pop, and it's gonna be like back in 2000.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#339
post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 any…

I don't have a subscription not even an Open AI account (mostly cause they messed up their google account system). You can't extract value of an LLM by just using the official UI, you just scratch the surface of how they work. And yet there aren't much developers able to actually build an actual agent architecture that does deliver some value. I don't include the "thousands" of startups that are clearly suffer from a signaling bias: they don't exist in the economy and I don't care about them like at all in my reasonning. I am talking about actual LLM developers that you can recruit locally the same way you recruit a web developer today, and that can make sense out of "frontier" LLM garbage talk by using proper architectures. These devs are not there yet.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#340

AI is being framed as the future because it is the future. If you can't see the writing on the wall then you surely have your head in the sand or are seeking out information to confirm your beliefs. I've thought a lot about where this belief comes from, that belief being the general Hacker News skepticism towards AI and especially big tech's promotion and alignment with it in recent years. I believe it's due to fear…

Well-said and spot on.
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