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Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

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Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#341

Post by redlock »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #267

I wish people would be more vocal in calling out that LLMs have unquestionably failed to deliver on the 2022-2023 promises of exponential improvement at the foundation model level. Yes they have improved, and there is more tooling around them, but clearly the difference between LLMs in 2025 and 2023 is not as large as 2023 and 2021. If there was truly exponential progress, there would be no possibility of debating th…

“But clearly the difference between LLMs in 2025 and 2023 is not as large as between 2023 and 2021.”

This is a ridiculous statement. A simple example of the huge difference is context size.

GPT-4 was, what, 8K? Now we’re in the millions with good retention. And this is just context size, let alone reasoning, multimodality, etc.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#342

Post by Anamon »

redlock wrote: post #341
crystal_revenge wrote: post #267

I wish people would be more vocal in calling out that LLMs have unquestionably failed to deliver on the 2022-2023 promises of exponential improvement at the foundation model level. Yes they have improved, and there is more tooling around them, but clearly the difference between LLMs in 2025 and 2023 is not as large as 2023 and 2021. If there was truly exponential progress, there would be no possibility of debating th…

“But clearly the difference between LLMs in 2025 and 2023 is not as large as between 2023 and 2021.” This is a ridiculous statement. A simple example of the huge difference is context size. GPT-4 was, what, 8K? Now we’re in the millions with good retention. And this is just context size, let alone reasoning, multimodality, etc.

I don't think that refutes the point. I'd readily agree with the parent that in terms of actual usefulness and efficiency gains, we're on a trajectory of diminishing returns.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#343

Post by etra0 »

layer8 wrote: post #232
etra0 wrote: post #127

LLMs have certainly become extremely useful for Software Engineers, they're very convincing (and pleasers, too) and I'm still unsure about the future of our day-to-day job. But one thing that has scared me the most, is the trust of LLMs output to the general society. I believe that for software engineers it's really easy to see if it's being useful or not -- We can just run the code and see if the output is what we e…

> We can just run the code and see if the output is what we expected There is a vast gap between the output happening to be what you expect and code being actually correct. That is, in a way, also the fundamental issue with LLMs: They are designed to produce “expected” output, not correct output.

That is exactly my point, though.

I didn't mean they do it on the first time, or that it is correct, I mean that you can 'run' and 'test it' to see if it does what you want in the way you want.

The same cannot be said to any other topics like medical advice, life advice, etc.

The point is, how verifiable is the output the LLM gives and so how useful it is.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#344

Post by lithocarpus »

georgefrowny wrote: post #262
laterium wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue you're overlooking is the scarcity of experts. You're comparing the current situation to an alternative universe where every person can ask a doctor their questions 10 times a day and instantly get an accurate response. That is not the reality we're living in. Doctors barely give you 5 minutes even if you get an appointment days or weeks in advance. There is just nobody to ask. The alternatives today are 1)…

> Much more important also is that LLMs don't try to scam you, don't try to fool you, don't look out for their own interests. When the appreciable-fraction-of-GDP money tap turns off, there going to be enormous pressure to start putting a finger on the scale here. And AI spew is theoretically a fantastic place to insert almost subliminal contextual adverts on a way that traditional advertising can only dream about. I…

I've been envisioning a market for agendas, where the players bid for the AI companies to nudge their LLM toward whatever given agenda. It would be subtle and not visible to users. Probably illegal, but I imagine it will happen to some degree. Or at the very least the government will want the "levers" to adjust various agendas the same way they did with covid.

I despise all of this. For the moment though, before all this is implemented, it's perhaps a brief golden age of LLMs usefulness. (And I'm sure LLMs will remain useful for many things, but there will be entire categories where they're ruined by pay to play the same as happened with Google search.)

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#345

Post by emp17344 »

redlock wrote: post #341
crystal_revenge wrote: post #267

I wish people would be more vocal in calling out that LLMs have unquestionably failed to deliver on the 2022-2023 promises of exponential improvement at the foundation model level. Yes they have improved, and there is more tooling around them, but clearly the difference between LLMs in 2025 and 2023 is not as large as 2023 and 2021. If there was truly exponential progress, there would be no possibility of debating th…

“But clearly the difference between LLMs in 2025 and 2023 is not as large as between 2023 and 2021.” This is a ridiculous statement. A simple example of the huge difference is context size. GPT-4 was, what, 8K? Now we’re in the millions with good retention. And this is just context size, let alone reasoning, multimodality, etc.

Gemini’s 2M context window is kind of a gimmick and not useable in practice.

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#346

Post by fennecbutt »

etra0 wrote: post #127

LLMs have certainly become extremely useful for Software Engineers, they're very convincing (and pleasers, too) and I'm still unsure about the future of our day-to-day job. But one thing that has scared me the most, is the trust of LLMs output to the general society. I believe that for software engineers it's really easy to see if it's being useful or not -- We can just run the code and see if the output is what we e…

Doesn't really matter when this is a human problem. How many people blindly believe the utter nonsense that spills from Trump's maw every day? Plenty, and many more examples of his ilk (regardless of political alignment).

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#347

Post by mrwrong »

AYBABTME wrote: post #317
skydhash wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're on the internet, you can make whatever claims you want. But even with no sources or experimental data, you can always add some rational logic to add weight to your claims. > They're undeniably useful in software development > I've fixed countless bugs in a tiny fraction of the time > I get the most reliable results > This works extremely well and reliably in producing high quality results. If there's one commo…

You can chose to see it as astroturfing, or see it as people actually thinking the superlatives are appropriate. To be honest, it makes no difference in my life if you believe or not what I'm saying. And from my perspective, it's just a bit astounding to read people's takes that are authoritatively claiming that LLMs are not useful for software development. It's like telling me over the phone that restaurant X doesn'…

X has a pasta dish is an easily verifiable factual claim. the pasta dish at X tastes good and is worth the money is a subjective claim, unverifiable without agreeing on a metric for taste and taking measurements. they are two very different kinds of disagreements

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#348

Post by mrwrong »

Aurornis wrote: post #179
candiddevmike wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Skeptic here: I do think LLMs are a fad for software development . They're an interesting phenomen that people have convinced themselves MUST BE USEFUL in the context of software development, either through ignorance or a sense of desperation. I do not believe LLMs will be used long term for any kind of serious software development use cases, as the maintenance cost of the code they produce will run development teams…

> They're an interesting phenomen that people have convinced themselves MUST BE USEFUL in the context of software development, Reading these comments during this period of history is interesting because a lot of us actually have found ways to make them useful, acknowledging that they’re not perfect. It’s surreal to read claims from people who insist we’re just deluding ourselves, despite seeing the results Yeah they’…

> It’s surreal to read claims from people who insist we’re just deluding ourselves, despite seeing the results

just imagine how the skeptics feel :p

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#349

Post by mrwrong »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #320
jibal wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand the meaning of "technically". Also, don't use inflammatory language.

I am not using inflammatory language to hurt anyone. I am illustrating a point on the contrast between technical meaning and non-technical meanings. One meaning is offensive the other meaning is technically correct. Don't start a witch hunt by deliberately misinterpreting what I'm saying. So technical means something like this: in a technical sense you are a stochastic parrot. You are also technically an object. But…

> a technical sense you are a stochastic parrot.

I am not. I'm sorry you feel this way about yourself. you are more than a next token predictor

Re: Reflections on AI at the End of 2025

#350

Post by zyngaro »

etra0 wrote: post #127

LLMs have certainly become extremely useful for Software Engineers, they're very convincing (and pleasers, too) and I'm still unsure about the future of our day-to-day job. But one thing that has scared me the most, is the trust of LLMs output to the general society. I believe that for software engineers it's really easy to see if it's being useful or not -- We can just run the code and see if the output is what we e…

The use of LLMs in software does not stop at code generation. With function calling, the prompt becomes the program and the LLMs acts as an intelligent interpreter/runtime that excutes complex business logic using primitives (the functions) they have access to (MCP) and that's the real paradigm shift for software engineering.
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