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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#791

Post by umeshunni »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #25
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…

Back in 1950s nuclear tech was seen as inevitable. Many people had even bought plates made from uranium glass. They still glow somewhere in my parents' cabinet or maybe I broke them

The comparison is apt because nuclear would have been inevitable if it wasn't for doomerism and public opinion turning against it after 3 mile Island / Chernobyl

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#792

Post by thewebguyd »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #513
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…

> 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 improv…

> 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.”

Yeah, no one wants to be the first to stop improving models. As long as investor money keeps flowing in there's no reason to - just keep burning it and try to outlast your competitors, figure out the business model later. We'll only start to see heavy monetization once the money dries up, if it ever does.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#793

Post by xpe »

xpe wrote: post #570
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…

> 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. Even if one accepts the framing (I don’t), LLMs are far from the first step. The article is about questioning “inevitabilism”! To do that, we need to find anchoring and assuming the status-quo. Think broader: there are possible future sc…

belated edits: … find other anchors … and try not to assume the status quo will persist, much less be part of a pattern or movement (which may only be clear in retrospect)

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#794

Post by smeeger »

by far the most pervasive idea now is that AGI is inevitable and trying to limit or stop it is impossible. people come to this conclusion without any evidence and without thinking about it very deeply. obviously we could stop it if we wanted to. ive given up trying to explain it to people. they just ignore me and continue believing it anyway.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#795

Post by giancarlostoro »

DSingularity wrote: post #761
giancarlostoro wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. Almost three years in, companies investing in LLMs have not yet discovered a business model that justifies the massive expenditure of training and hosting them, the majority of consumer usage is at the free tier, the industry is seeing the first signs of pulling back investments, and model capabilities are plateauing at a level where most people agree that the output is trite and unpleasant to consume. You hit t…

You aren’t extrapolating enough. Nearly the entire history of computing has been one that isolates between shared computing and personal computing. Give it time. These massive cloud bills are building the case for accelerators in phones. It’s going to happen just needs time.

That's fine, that's what I want ;) I just grow tired of people hating on me for thinking that we really need to localize the models for them to take off.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#796

Post by teeray »

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…

> If in 2009…

…is exactly inevitablist framing. This claims perfect knowledge of the future based on previous uncertain knowledge of the future (which is now certain). You could have been making the same claims about the inevitability of sporks in the late 19th century and how cutlery drawers should adapt to the inevitable single-utensil future.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#797

Post by MattSayar »

mettamage wrote: post #343
bambax wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with LLM is when they're used for creativity or for thinking. Just because LLMs are indeed useful in some (even many!) context, including coding, esp. to either get something started, or, like in your example, to transcode an existing code base to another platform, doesn't mean they will change everything . It doesn't mean “AI is the new electricity.” (actual quote from Andrew Ng in the post). More like A…

> everyone can code! I work directly with marketers and even if you give them something like n8n, they find it hard to be precise. Programming teaches you a "precise mindset" that one doesn't have when they aren't really thinking about tech professionally. I wonder if seasoned UX designers can code now. They do think professionally about software. I wonder if it's at a deep enough granularity such that they can simpl…

Our UX designers have been prototyping things they started in Figma with Windsurf. They seem pretty happy with it. Of course there's a big step in getting it production-ready but it really smooths the conversation with engineering.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#798

Post by mvieira38 »

alonsonic wrote: post #541
nyarlathotep_ wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do wonder where in the cycle this all is given that we've now seen yet another LLM/"Agentic" VSCode fork. I'm genuinely surprised that Code forks and LLM cli things are seemingly the only use case that's approached viability. Even a year ago, I figured there'd be something else that's emerged by now.

But there are a ton of LLM powered products in the market. I have a friend in finance that uses LLM powered products for financial analysis, he works in a big bank. Just now anthropic released a product to compete in this space. Another friend in real estate uses LLM powered lead qualifications products, he runs marketing campaigns and the AI handles the initial interaction via email or phone and then ranks the lead…

LLMs are amazing at anything requiring text analysis (go figure). Everyone I know doing equity or economic research in finance is using it extensively for that, and from what I hear from doctors the LLMs are as good as that in their space if not better

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#799

Post by DiscourseFan »

rafaelmn wrote: post #24
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…

If you claimed that AI was inevitable in the 80s and invested, or claimed people would be inevitably moving to VR 10 years ago - you would be shit out of luck. Zuck is still burning billions on it with nothing to show for it and a bad outlook. Even Apple tried it and hilariously missed the demand estimate. The only potential bailout for this tech is AR, but thats still years away from consumer market and widespread a…

>Tesla stock has been riding on the self driving robo-taxies meme for a decade now

We do have self-driving taxis now, and they are so good that people will pay extra to take them. It's just not Tesla cars doing it.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#800

Post by smeeger »

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…

the internet got rid of a lot of waiting. AI gets rid of a lot of cognitive work. the resulting impact on peoples lives will be much more negative with AI. and we have a choice as to whether or not we allow AI to exist
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