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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#641

Post by lwelyk »

castigatio wrote: post #594

The argument doesn't work because whatever you think of where generative AI is taking us or not taking us - it is 100% demonstrably better at doing a wide range of tasks than other technologies we have available to us - even in its current exact form. Once computers started to be connected could we have stopped the development of the world wide web. If there's a way of getting humanity to collectively agree on things…

What tasks is it better at doing than other technologies we have available to us? I'm not being sarcastic, I generally want to know in which areas you think it is better.

I can't think of anything off the top of my head that isn't just doing the things that make it a generative AI. (It's better at generating an image that I describe to it, etc, but that's not something that another technology does.)

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#642

Post by hinkley »

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…

If there was a way to explain contracts in natural language, don’t you think lawyers would have figured it out by now? How much GDP do we waste on one party thinking the contract says they paid for one thing but they got something else?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#643

Post by [deleted] »

isoprophlex wrote: post #161
ccortes wrote: post #145

Earlier today I was scrolling at the “work at a startup” posts. Seems like everyone is doing LLM stuff. We are back at the “uber for X” but now it is “ChatGPT for X”. I get it, but I’ve never felt more uninspired looking at what yc startups are working on today. For the first time they all feel incredibly generic

Finally we've managed to disintermediate everything. Even the cutting out of middlemen can now be automated. A machine stamping out cookiecutter saas businesses. Business model: Uber for "Uber for x". Who wants to start a goat farming co-op?

[deleted]

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#644

Post by scroot »

dicroce wrote: post #634

Most of us that are somewhat into the tech behind AI know that it's all based on simple matrix math... and anyone can do that... So "inevitibalism" is how we sound because we see that if OpenAI doesn't do it, someone else will. Even if all the countries in the world agree to ban AI, its not based on something with actual scarcity (like purified uranium, or gold) so someone somewhere will keep moving this tech forward…

> Even if all the countries in the world agree to ban AI, its not based on something with actual scarcity (like purified uranium, or gold) so someone somewhere will keep moving this tech forward...

However, this is the crux of the matter! At issue is whether or not one believes people (individually and/or socially) have the ability to make large decisions about what should or should not be acceptable. Worse -- a culture with _assumed_ inevitability concerning some trend might well bring forth that trend _merely by the assumed inevitability and nothing else_.

It is obvious that the scales required to make LLM-style AI effective require extremely large capital investments and infrastructure, and that at the same time there is potentially a lot of money to be made. Both of those aspects -- to me -- point to a lot of "assumed inevitability," in particular when you look at who is making the most boisterous statements and for what reasons.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#645

Post by svieira »

miningape wrote: post #577
evantbyrne wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty bearish on the idea that AGI is going to take off anytime soon, but I read a significant amount of theology growing up and I would not describe the popular essays from e.g., LessWrong as religious in nature. I also would not describe them as appearing poorly read. The whole "look they just have a new god!" is a common trope in religious apologetics that is usually just meant to distract from the author's o…

While it's a fair criticism, just because someone doesn't believe in a god doesn't mean the religious hardware in their brain has been turned off. It's still there and operational - I don't think it's a surprise that this hardware's attention would then be automatically tuned to a different topic. I think you can also see this in the intensification of political discussion, which has a similar intensity to religious…

Which then leads you to the question "who installed the hardware"?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#646

Post by perching_aix »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #556

The author seems to imply that the "framing" of an argument is done so in bad faith in order to win an argument but only provides one-line quotes where there is no contextual argument. This tactic by the author is a straw-man argument - he's framing the position of tech leaders and our acceptance of it as the reason AI exists, instead of being honest, which is that they were simply right in their predictions: AI was…

> The author seems to imply that the "framing" of an argument is done so in bad faith in order to win an argument (...) This tactic by the author is a straw-man argument

This is what I was expecting from the title, but not really what I found in the content in the end. Instead, to me it read to be more about argumentation and inevitibilism in general, than about LLMs specifically. From my perspective, to claim and ride it otherwise rings as mischaracterization.

... Which is also an acknowledgement I missed from the article. The use of inevitability as a framing device is just one of the many forms of loaded language, and of the encoding of shared assumptions without preestablishing that the other person actually shares them. Notice how I didn't say that you're mischaracterizing the article outright - we clearly read what was written differently. To assert my interpretation as correct by encoding it as framing would be pretty nasty. Sadly not uncommon though, and it's one of those things that if you try to actually control for, writing in a digestable way in general becomes very hard to impossible.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#647

Post by Cthulhu_ »

dbalatero wrote: post #538
alonsonic wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They might generate 10b ARR, but they lose a lot more than that. Their paid users are a fraction of the free riders. https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-is-a-systemic-risk-to-the...

That's fixable, a gradual adjusting of the free tier will happen soon enough once they stop pumping money into it. Part of this is also a war of attrition though, who has the most money to keep a free tier the longest and attract the most people. Very familiar strategy for companies trying to gain market share.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#648

Post by NilMostChill »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #628
jdiff wrote: post #568

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IT industry is also full of salesmen and con men, both enjoy unrealistic exaggeration. Your statements would not be out of place 20 years ago when the iPhone dropped. Your statements would not be out of place 3 years ago before every NFT went to 0. LLMs could hit an unsolvably hard wall next year and settle into a niche of utility. AI could solve a lengthy list of outstanding architectural and technical problems…

> LLMs could hit an unsolvably hard wall next year and settle into a niche of utility LLMs in their current state have integrated into the workflows for many, many IT roles. They'll never be niche, unless governing bodies come together to kill them. > I can't find a single open source codebase, actively used in production, and primarily maintained and developed with AI Straw man argument - this is in no way a metric…

> LLMs in their current state have integrated into the workflows for many, many IT roles. They'll never be niche, unless governing bodies come together to kill them.

That is an exaggeration, it is integrated into some workflows, usually in a provisional manner while the full implications of such integrations are assessed for viability in the mid to long term.

At least in the fields of which i have first hand knowledge.

> Straw man argument - this is in no way a metric for validating the power of LLMs as a tool for IT roles. Can you not find open source code bases that leverage LLMS because you haven't looked, or because you can't tell the difference between human and LLM code?

Straw man rebuttal, presenting an imaginary position in which this statement is doesn't apply doesn't invalidate the statement as a whole.

> As I said, you haven't been paying attention.

Or alternatively you've been paying attention to a selective subset of your specific industry and have made wide extrapolations based on that.

> Denialism - the practice of denying the existence, truth, or validity of something despite proof or strong evidence that it is real, true, or valid

What's the one where you claim strong proof or evidence while only providing anecdotal "trust me bro" ?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#649

Post by ToucanLoucan »

jdiff wrote: post #568
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #556

The author seems to imply that the "framing" of an argument is done so in bad faith in order to win an argument but only provides one-line quotes where there is no contextual argument. This tactic by the author is a straw-man argument - he's framing the position of tech leaders and our acceptance of it as the reason AI exists, instead of being honest, which is that they were simply right in their predictions: AI was…

The IT industry is also full of salesmen and con men, both enjoy unrealistic exaggeration. Your statements would not be out of place 20 years ago when the iPhone dropped. Your statements would not be out of place 3 years ago before every NFT went to 0. LLMs could hit an unsolvably hard wall next year and settle into a niche of utility. AI could solve a lengthy list of outstanding architectural and technical problems…

> The IT industry is also full of salesmen and con men, both enjoy unrealistic exaggeration. Your statements would not be out of place 20 years ago when the iPhone dropped. Your statements would not be out of place 3 years ago before every NFT went to 0. LLMs could hit an unsolvably hard wall next year and settle into a niche of utility.

Not only is that a could, I'd argue they already are. The huge new "premier" models are barely any better than the big ticket ones that really kicked the hype into overdrive.

* Using them as a rubber duck that provides suggestions back for IT problems and coding is huge, I will fully cosign that, but it is not even remotely worth what OpenAI is valued at or would need to charge for it to make it profitable, let alone pay off it's catastrophic debt. Meanwhile every other application is a hard meh.

* The AI generated video ads just look like shit and I'm sorry, call me a luddite if you will, but I just think objectively less of companies that leverage AI video/voices/writing in their advertisements. It looks cheap, in the same way dollar store products have generic, crappy packaging, and makes me less willing to open my wallet. That said I won't be shocked at all if that sticks around and bolsters valuations, because tons of companies worldwide have been racing to the bottom for decades now.

* My employer has had a hard NO AI policy for both vetting candidates and communicating with them for our human resources contracting and we've fired one who wouldn't comply. It just doesn't work, we can tell when they're using bots to review resumes because applicants get notably, measurably worse.

LLMs are powerful tools that have a place, but there is no fucking UNIVERSE where they are the next iPhone that silicon valley is utterly desperate for. They just aren't.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#650

Post by sumeno »

strangescript wrote: post #498
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 think the difference between all previous technologies is scope. If you make a super sonic jet that gets people from place A to place B faster for more money, but the target consumer is like "yeah, I don't care that much about that at that price point", then your tech sort is of dead. You are also fully innovated on that product, like maybe you can make it more fuel efficient, sure, but your scope is narrow. AI is…

The number of things it can actually do is significantly lower than the number of things the hype men are claiming it can do.
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