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But there is so much real economic value being created - not speculation, but actual business processes - billions of dollars - it’s hard to seriously defend the claim that LLMs are “failures” in any practical sense.
Doesn’t mean we aren’t headed for a winter of sobering reality… but it doesn’t invalidate the disruption either.
This has convinced many non-programmers that they can program, but the results are consistently disastrous, because it still requires genuine expertise to spot the hallucinations. I've been programming for 30+ years and now a people manager. Claude Code has enabled me to code again and I'm several times more productive than I ever was as an IC in the 2000s and 2010s. I suspect this person hasn't really tried the most…
If you know what you are doing it works kind of mid. You see how anything more then a prototype will create lots of issues in the long run.
Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
Modern LLMs could be like the equivalent of those steam powered toys the Romans had in their time. Steam tech went through a long winter before finally being fully utilized for the Industrial Revolution. We’ll probably never see the true AI revolution in our lifetime, only glimpses of what could be, through toys like LLMs. What we should underscore though, is that even if there is a new AI winter, the world isn’t goi…
I think we'll continue to see anything be automated that can be automated in a way that reduces head count. So you have the dumb AI as a first line of defense and lay off half the customer service you had before.
In the meantime, fewer and fewer jobs (especially entry level), a rising poor class as the middle class is eliminated and a greater wealth gap than ever before. The markets are going to also collapse from this AI bubble. It's just a matter of when.
This has convinced many non-programmers that they can program, but the results are consistently disastrous, because it still requires genuine expertise to spot the hallucinations. I've been programming for 30+ years and now a people manager. Claude Code has enabled me to code again and I'm several times more productive than I ever was as an IC in the 2000s and 2010s. I suspect this person hasn't really tried the most…
This has convinced many non-programmers that they can program, but the results are consistently disastrous, because it still requires genuine expertise to spot the hallucinations. I've been programming for 30+ years and now a people manager. Claude Code has enabled me to code again and I'm several times more productive than I ever was as an IC in the 2000s and 2010s. I suspect this person hasn't really tried the most…
You have decades upon decades of experience on how to approach software development and solve problems. You know the right questions to ask.
The actual non-programmers I see on Reddit are having discussions about topics such as “I don’t believe that technical debt is a real thing” and “how can I go back in time if Claude Code destroyed my code”.
The argument that computational complexity has something to do with this could have merit but the article certainly doesn’t give indication as to why. Is the brain NP complete? Maybe maybe not. I could see many arguments about why modern research will fail to create AGI but just hand waving “reality is NP-hard” is not enough.
The fact is: something fundamental has changed that enables a computer to pretty effectively understand natural language. That’s a discovery on the scale of the internet or google search and shouldn’t be discounted… and usage proves it. In 2 years there is a platform with billions of users. On top of that huge fields of new research are making leaps and bounds with novel methods utilizing AI for chemistry, computational geometry, biology etc.
It’s a paradigm shift.
When the hype is infinite (technological singularity and utopia), any reality will be a let down. But there is so much real economic value being created - not speculation, but actual business processes - billions of dollars - it’s hard to seriously defend the claim that LLMs are “failures” in any practical sense. Doesn’t mean we aren’t headed for a winter of sobering reality… but it doesn’t invalidate the disruption…
Is there really a clear-cut distinction between the two in today's VC and acquisition based economy?
When the hype is infinite (technological singularity and utopia), any reality will be a let down. But there is so much real economic value being created - not speculation, but actual business processes - billions of dollars - it’s hard to seriously defend the claim that LLMs are “failures” in any practical sense. Doesn’t mean we aren’t headed for a winter of sobering reality… but it doesn’t invalidate the disruption…
LLMs have failed to live up to the hype, but they haven't failed outright.
1) LLMs have failed to live up to the hype.
Maybe. Depends upon's who's hype. But I think it is fine to say that we don't have AGI today (however that is defined) and that some people hyped that up.
2) LLMs haven't failed outright
I think that this is a vast understatement.
LLMs have been a wild success. At big tech over 40% of checked in code is LLM generated. At smaller companies the proportion is larger. ChatGPT has over 800 million weekly active users.
Students throughout the world, and especially in the developed world are using "AI" at 85-90% (from some surveys).
Between 40% of professionals and 90% (depending upon survey and profession) are using "AI".
This is 3 years after the launch of ChatGPT (and the capabilities of chatGPT 3.5 were so limited compared to today that it is a shame that they get bundled together in our discussions). I would say instead of "failed outright" that they are the most successful consumer product of all time (so far).