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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#371

Post by moffkalast »

wincy wrote: post #347
moffkalast wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ML models have the good property of only requiring investment once and can then be used till the end of history or until something better replaces them. Granted the initial investment is immense, and the results are not guaranteed which makes it risky, but it's like building a dam or a bridge. Being in the age where bridge technology evolves massively on a weekly basis is a recipe for being wasteful if you keep start…

Nah, if TSMC got exploded and there was a world war, in 20 years all the LLMs would bit rot.

Eh, I doubt it, tech only got massively better in each world war so far, through unlimited reckless strategic spending. We'd probably get a TSMC-like fab on every continent by the end of it. Maybe even optical computers. Quadrotor UAV are the future of warfare after all, and they require lots of compute.

Adjusted for inflation it took over 120 billion to build the fleet of liberty ships during WW2, that's like at least 10 TSMC fabs.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#372

Post by fho »

bradly wrote: post #121
mg wrote: 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…

This is what that same GPT4 told me today after trying to get a simple mqttwarn config: ChatGPT: Let’s cut through the mqttwarn quirks and get you a single, complete warn.ini that I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32 Me: that "I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32:" How did you perform this test? ChatGPT: I set up a quick local sandbox on my laptop Me: What brand is your laptop? What store did you buy it at? Cha…

I perceive a huge divide between people that (try to) use dialog systems (e.g. ChatGPT, CoPilot) for programming and people that use (and pay for) dedicated programming agents (Cursor, Clint, etc).

From my experience using both, only the later is worth using.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#373

Post by alexdowad »

My belief is that whatever technology can be invented by humans (under the constraints of the laws of physics, etc) will eventually be invented. I don't have a strong argument for this; it's just what makes sense to me.

If true, then an immediate corollary is that if it is possible for humans to create LLMs (or other AI systems) which can program, or do some other tasks, better than humans can, that will happen. Inevitabilism? I don't think so.

If that comes to pass, then what people will do with that technology, and what will change as a result, will be up to the people who are alive at the time. But not creating the technology is not an option, if it's within the realm of what humans can possibly create.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#375

Post by InfinityByTen »

teiferer wrote: post #325
mg wrote: 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…

As long as you view LLM as just a tool to do some mostly-mechanical changes to some codebase, you are missing the big picture which the article is about. What do LLMs mean for your mom? For society? For the future world view of your kids? Nobody cares about library refactoring.

A lot of people are missing this point. It's not about what it can do today. It's about what all you're promised it can do and then be sold to you like there's no alternative; and no one really knows if it will be able to do it or what all non-KPI functions are lost because AI is the only way ahead.

Having used a customer service, I just happen to know that a smarter and a better chat-bot for a bog-standard service request (like a road-side car breakdown) isn't the solution for a better experience.

But now, since a chat bot is cheaper to run, the discussion in the service provider HQ will be about which chat-bot technology to migrate to because user research says it provides for an overall better UX. No one remembers what it is to talk to a human.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#376

Post by sudhirb »

polotics wrote: post #318
benreesman wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has historically been very much an LLM inevitabalism skeptic and has recently decided that we've crossed the breakeven point with indiscriminant use of Opus 4, eh, it's precisely because we're in late LLM === AGI hype world. They're actually cutting the shit on "this can do anything, and in a month, twice that!". This thing is crazy operator aligned, wildly SFT'd on curated codebases, and running a TTF…

Can you translate "SFT'd" and "TTFT" and "TESCREAL" for the less clued-in members of the audience? On "one ine itabalism" I just gave up.

I think:

SFT = Supervised Fine Tuning TTFT = Time To First Token TESCREAL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL (bit of a long definition)

"on ine itabalism" = online tribalism?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#377

Post by lettuceconstant »

cheevly wrote: post #336
mlsu wrote: 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?

Surely the fact that you're on hackerNEWS does not imply that you like all the news?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#378

Post by aspenmayer »

polotics wrote: post #318
benreesman wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has historically been very much an LLM inevitabalism skeptic and has recently decided that we've crossed the breakeven point with indiscriminant use of Opus 4, eh, it's precisely because we're in late LLM === AGI hype world. They're actually cutting the shit on "this can do anything, and in a month, twice that!". This thing is crazy operator aligned, wildly SFT'd on curated codebases, and running a TTF…

Can you translate "SFT'd" and "TTFT" and "TESCREAL" for the less clued-in members of the audience? On "one ine itabalism" I just gave up.

> one ine itabalism

online tribalism?

> SFT'd

supervised fine tuned?

> TTFT

test-time fine tune?

> TESCREAL

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TESCREAL

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#379

Post by staunton »

imdsm wrote: post #356
AndyKelley wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can fight against the current of society or you can swim in the direction it's pulling you. If you want to fight against it, you can, but you shouldn't expect others to. For some, they can see that it's inevitable because the strength of the movement is greater than the resistance. It's fair enough to say "you can change the future", but sometimes you can't. You don't have the resources, and often, the will. The…

I think it's important not to be too sure abot what of the future one is "seeing". It's easy to be confidently wrong and one may find countless examples and quotes where people made this mistake.

Even if you don't think you can change something, you shouldn't be sure about that. If you care about the outcome, you try things also against the odds and also try to organize such efforts with others.

(I'm puzzled by poeple who don't see it that way but at the same time don't find VC and start-ups insanely weird...).

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#380

Post by Double_a_92 »

mg wrote: 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 sure? For me they always struggle and forget code after about 300 lines.
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