LLM Inevitabilism • Hacker News Board

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#511

Post by bbor » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:10 PM UTC

alonsonic wrote: post #505

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…

I'm confused with your second point. LLM companies are not making any money from current models? Openai generates 10b USD ARR and has 100M MAUs. Yes they are running at a loss right now but that's because they are racing to improve models. If they stopped today to focus on optimization of their current models to minimize operating cost and monetizing their massive user base you think they don't have a successful busi…

It’s just the natural counterpart to dogmatic inevitabilism — dogmatic denialism. One denies the present, the other the (recent) past. It’s honestly an understandable PoV though when you consider A) most people understand “AI” and “chatbot” to be synonyms, and B) the blockchain hype cycle(s) bred some deep cynicism about software innovation.

Funny seeing that comment on this post in particular, tho. When OP says “I’m not sure it’s a world I want”, I really don’t think they’re thinking about corporate revenue opportunities… More like Rehoboam, if not Skynet.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#512

Post by mc32 » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:10 PM UTC

alonsonic wrote: post #505

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…

I'm confused with your second point. LLM companies are not making any money from current models? Openai generates 10b USD ARR and has 100M MAUs. Yes they are running at a loss right now but that's because they are racing to improve models. If they stopped today to focus on optimization of their current models to minimize operating cost and monetizing their massive user base you think they don't have a successful busi…

Making money and operating at a loss contradict each other. Maybe someday they’ll make money —but not just yet. As many have said they’re hoping capturing market will position them nicely once things settle. Obviously we’re not there yet.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#513

Post by Forgeties79 » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:11 PM UTC

alonsonic wrote: post #505

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…

I'm confused with your second point. LLM companies are not making any money from current models? Openai generates 10b USD ARR and has 100M MAUs. Yes they are running at a loss right now but that's because they are racing to improve models. If they stopped today to focus on optimization of their current models to minimize operating cost and monetizing their massive user base you think they don't have a successful busi…

> that's because they are racing improve models. If they stopped today to focus on optimization of their current models to minimize operating cost and monetizing their user base you think they don't have a successful business model?

I imagine they would’ve flicked that switch if they thought it would generate a profit, but as it is it seems like all AI companies are still happy to burn investor money trying to improve their models while I guess waiting for everyone else to stop first.

I also imagine it’s hard to go to investors with “while all of our competitors are improving their models and either closing the gap or surpassing us, we’re just going to stabilize and see if people will pay for our current product.”

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#514

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:12 PM UTC

alonsonic wrote: post #505

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…

I'm confused with your second point. LLM companies are not making any money from current models? Openai generates 10b USD ARR and has 100M MAUs. Yes they are running at a loss right now but that's because they are racing to improve models. If they stopped today to focus on optimization of their current models to minimize operating cost and monetizing their massive user base you think they don't have a successful busi…

[deleted]

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#515

Post by bradly » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:13 PM UTC

killerstorm wrote: post #158

bradly wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Did you ever think there's a reason why people are paying for professional tools like Cursor or Claude Code instead of using free ChatGPT? Ye, the free version has some known issues. They cram a lot of stuff into GPT-4o, so it hallucinates a lot. Claude Opus 4 often gives perfectly working code on the first try, and it's much less likely to hallucinate or argue with you when it's wrong. It costs around $1 per request…

Sorry, I used a poorly worded phrase in my comment. When I wrote "for free" I meant without me having to think (vibing), not in reference to model subscriptions. I have a paid ChatGPT subscription.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#516

Post by jowea » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:13 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #29

delichon wrote: post #2

If in 2009 you claimed that the dominance of the smartphone was inevitable, it would have been because you were using one and understood its power, not because you were reframing away our free choice for some agenda. In 2025 I don't think you can really be taking advantage of AI to do real work and still see its mass adaptation as evitable. It's coming faster and harder than any tech in history. As scary as that is w…

Feels somewhat like a self fulfilling prophecy though. Big tech companies jam “AI” in every product crevice they can find… “see how widely it’s used? It’s inevitable!” I agree that AI is inevitable. But there’s such a level of groupthink about it at the moment that everything is manifested as an agentic text box. I’m looking forward to discovering what comes after everyone moves on from that.

Big Tech can jam X everywhere and not get actual adoption though, it's not magic. They can nudge people but can't force them to use it. And yes a lot of AI jammed everywhere is getting the Clippy reaction.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#517

Post by pj_mukh » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:14 PM UTC

mns wrote: post #308

eric-burel wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

>evelopers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet. Which is basically what? The infinite monkey theorem? Brute forcing solutions for problems at huge costs? Somehow people have been tricked to actually embrace and accept that now they have to pay subscriptions from 20$ to 300$ to freaking code? How insane is that, something that was a very low entry point and something that any…

I pay $300 to fly from SF to LA when I could've just walked for free. Its true. How classist!

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#518

Post by desumeku » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:14 PM UTC

atleastoptimal wrote: post #265

AI is being framed as the future because it is the future. If you can't see the writing on the wall then you surely have your head in the sand or are seeking out information to confirm your beliefs. I've thought a lot about where this belief comes from, that belief being the general Hacker News skepticism towards AI and especially big tech's promotion and alignment with it in recent years. I believe it's due to fear…

>This increasingly likely future is made all the more infuriating by the annoyances of the current reality of AI. The fact that AI is so presently inescapable despite how many glaring security-affecting flaws it causes, how much it propagates slop in the information commons, and how effectively it emboldens a particularly irksome brand of overconfidence in the VC world is preemptive insult to injury in the lead up a reality where AI will nevertheless control everything.

So basically: "yes, I know AI is actually completely and totally useless and a net negative on the world just like you say it is, but I can imagine that things will suddenly turn into the sci-fi ultraverse for no reason so therefore you're wrong."

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#519

Post by aksosoakbab » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:17 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #495

People like communicating in natural language. LLMs are the first step in the movement away from the "early days" of computing where you needed to learn the logic based language and interface of computers to interact with them. That is where the inevitabilism comes from. No one* wants to learn how to use a computer, they want it to be another entity that they can just talk to. *I'm rounding off the <5% who deeply lov…

Spoken language is a miserable language to communicate in for programming. It’s one of the major detractors of LLMs.

Programming languages have a level of specification orders of magnitude greater than human communication ones.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#520

Post by spopejoy » Tue, Jul 15, 2025, 1:18 PM UTC

Workaccount2 wrote: post #495

People like communicating in natural language. LLMs are the first step in the movement away from the "early days" of computing where you needed to learn the logic based language and interface of computers to interact with them. That is where the inevitabilism comes from. No one* wants to learn how to use a computer, they want it to be another entity that they can just talk to. *I'm rounding off the <5% who deeply lov…

> People like communicating in natural language

It does puzzle me a little that there isn't more widespread acclaim of this, achieving a natural-language UI has been a failed dream of CS for decades and now we can just take it for granted.

LLMs may or may not be the greatest thing for coding, writing, researching, or whatever, but this UX is a keeper. Being able to really use language to express a problem, have recourse to abbreviations, slang, and tone, and have it all get through is amazing, and amazingly useful.