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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#441

Post by [deleted] »

eric-burel wrote: post #133
lsy wrote: post #63

I think two things can be true simultaneously: 1. LLMs are a new technology and it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle with that. It's difficult to imagine a future where they don't continue to exist in some form, with all the timesaving benefits and social issues that come with them. 2. Almost three years in, companies investing in LLMs have not yet discovered a business model that justifies the massive expen…

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).

[deleted]

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#442

Post by ipdashc »

phito wrote: post #352
kazinator wrote: post #74

LLM is an almost complete waste of time. Advocates of LLM are not accurately measuring their time and productivity, and comparing that to LLM-free alternative approaches.

Indeed, I keep seeing comments stating that LLMs have completely changed their way of programming or even changed their lives. All I can think is, they must have been pretty bad at programming for the impact to be that dramatic.

I keep seeing people making this point as well. But like... yeah? Isn't that the whole idea, that it lets you write programs even if you're not very good at it? I'm a mediocre programmer and LLMs have certainly been useful for me. Not sure what future I or others in my boat have in the job market a few years down the road, though.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#443

Post by bemmu »

I was going to make an argument that it's inevitable, because at some point compute will get so cheap that someone could just train one at home, and since the knowledge of how to do it is out there, people will do it.

But seeing that a company like Meta is using >100k GPUs to train these models, even at 25% yearly improvement it would still take until the year ~2060 before someone could buy 50 GPUs and have the equivalent power to train one privately. So I suppose if society decided to outlaw LLM training, or a market crash put off companies from continuing to do it, it might be possible to put the genie back in the bottle for a few decades.

I wouldn't be surprised however if there are still 10x algorithmic improvements to be found too...

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#444

Post by jl6 »

dale_glass wrote: post #394
pavlov wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare these positive introductory experiences with two technologies that were pushed extremely hard by commercial interests in the past decade: crypto/web3 and VR/metaverse. Neither was ever able to offer this kind of instant usefulness. With crypto, it’s still the case that you create a wallet and then… there’s nothing to do on the platform. You’re expected to send real money to someone so they’ll give you some of…

> With the “metaverse”, you clear out a space around you, strap a heavy thing on your head, and shut yourself into an artificial environment. After the first oohs and aahs, you enter a VR chat room… And realize the thing on your head adds absolutely nothing to the interaction. It doesn't if you use it as just a chat room. For some people it does add a lot, though. The "metaverse" as in Active Worlds, Second Life, VR…

I don’t have a problem with chess.com existing, but if someone starts shouting loudly about how chess.com is going to be the future of everything, and that I’ll need to buy a bunch of expensive-but-still-kinda-crappy hardware to participate in the inevitable chess.com-based society, and that we need to ground-up rearchitect computing to treat chess as fundamental component of UI… well, it just gets a little tiresome.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#445

Post by pavlov »

ryanjshaw wrote: post #392
pavlov wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare these positive introductory experiences with two technologies that were pushed extremely hard by commercial interests in the past decade: crypto/web3 and VR/metaverse. Neither was ever able to offer this kind of instant usefulness. With crypto, it’s still the case that you create a wallet and then… there’s nothing to do on the platform. You’re expected to send real money to someone so they’ll give you some of…

Every single HN post on AI or crypto I see this argument and it’s exhausting. When Eliza was first built it was seen a toy. It took many more decades for LLMs to appear. My favourite example is prime numbers: a bunch of ancient nerds messing around with numbers that today, thousands of years later, allow us to securely buy anything and everything without leaving our homes or opening our mouths. You can’t dismiss a te…

Research is fine. But when corporations and venture capitalists are asking for your money today in exchange for vague promises of eventual breakthroughs, it's not wrong to question their motives.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#446

Post by ACCount36 »

AndyKelley wrote: post #213
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…

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

The year is 1985. Internet is coming. You don't want it to.

Can you stop it?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#447

Post by Barrin92 »

killerstorm wrote: post #197
sircastor wrote: post #172

The hardest part about inevitablism here is that the people who are making the argument this is inevitable are the same people who are the people who are shoveling hundreds of millions of dollars into it. Into the development, the use, the advertisement. The foxes are building doors into the hen houses and saying there’s nothing to be done, foxes are going to get in so we might as well make it something that works fo…

"put your money where your mouth is" is generally a good thing.

It's a good thing in a world where the pot of money is so small it doesn't influence what it's betting on, it's a bad thing when you're talking about Zuckerberg or Lehman Brothers, because when they decide to put their money on strange financial investments they just make reality and regardless how stupid in the long run we're going down with the ship for at least a decade or so

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#448

Post by TacticalCoder »

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…

[dead]

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#449

Post by cindyllm »

ACCount36 wrote: post #446
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.

The year is 1985. Internet is coming. You don't want it to. Can you stop it?

[dead]
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