Why are people so negative about this? It feels like a fun project and at 17 the stakes are not really high. Something one could easily do on summer break in a couple of weeks.
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I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
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Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#322I'll use this post as a shameless opportunity to tell more people about a little side project, I made: http://languagemodelbuilder.com teaches you (in a few hours to days) how to build an LLM from scratch. It's entirely free, without accounts, and without data collection.
I wish this was available for young folk in Romania: As it happens: macOS: 2.70% of desktop operating-system usage in Romania; OS X: 2.55%; Combined Apple desktop share: approximately 5.25%; Windows: 90.65%; Linux: 4.02% or so AI tells me.
Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#323I wonder at the “worlds” Mr Graham envisions, and what is their cardinality. Is this the only 17 yro reimagining, or is there an army of 17yro, of which this LLM curious persona is but one?
Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#324Horrible advice. This may have been good advice 10 years ago, but not today. There are no positions for people who "kind of understand how toy LLMs work" because so many engineers do these days. Most of the real LLM optimization work is at the edge of research and highly proprietary and not something you could ever do without infra that costs millions. But of course, 10 years ago this wasn't obvious.
What would be better advice for a 17 year old?
Stay away from the internet and learn how to build a local business instead.
Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is that they’re going to be surpassed by a much better technology that doesn’t have the inherent and unavoidable downsides of LLMs. Like, right now especially in the US you’d probably sound crazy saying that one day nobody’s going to buy a gasoline car, and that EVs are going to completely replace them. But that’s basically an inevitability based on the direction we know technology is going to go, it’s only…
World models will definitely incorporate LLMs or at least text decoders in their final architecture, LLMs are here to stay.
Maybe this is a dumb analogy but is that kind of like saying “well EVs will still use lubricant! Cars that use oil are here to stay!”?
The point being that the way we heavily rely on LLMs specifically right now is likely to cease to be the case, and that in the future they’ll be almost like an irrelevant component.
Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#326YC Combinator guy says that with a time machine he would learn to build the currently trillions-valued or whatever technology. Okay.
No, that isn't what he said.
He said, if he is 17 _now_, with no family, no commitments, no pressure to start a career, he'd invest his time to learn to build LLMs from scratch instead of trying to start a company.
Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#327LLMs will take away all jobs except yours, LLM maker. Keep at it, you're safe!
Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#328Yeah, no way.
I'd move to the middle of nowhere and work multiple jobs on a farm and in construction. Learn how to grow food, and build things. Meet the farmer's daughter, and marry her. Then, buy my own land, grow my own food, and build my own things.
Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's like looking at the early internet and then suggesting teenagers should write browsers as their projects instead of webpages.
Early internet let me create the best personal web page in my city that I knew of with 2 weeks experience as a 12 year old. I imagine that same 12 year old could be more knowledgeable about LLMs than 99% of people in the same period.
You're vastly over-estimating the difficulty of making a web page and even more vastly under-estimating the difficulty of LLMs.
Re: I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch
#330Didn't his swiss watch essay say he'd essentially leave the industry because there will only be bloat from now on?