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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#851

Post by eddythompson80 »

osti wrote: post #704
seydor wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they said the same about VR glasses, about cryptocurrency ...

If you are seriously equating these two with AI, then you have horrible judgements and should learn to think critically, but unfortunately for you, I don't think critical thinking can be learned despite what people say. Note that I'm not even going to bother arguing against your point and instead resort to personal attacks,because I believe it would be a waste of time to argue against people with poor judgment.

You're significantly stupider than you think you are.

Notice how I did that too?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#852

Post by cruffle_duffle »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #602
throwaway328 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here's a list of stuff I've seen or that the non-computer-experts tell me they're doing with it, since the last month or two when suddenly even people who were against it are accepting it, along with people who'd never heard of it suddenly using it: - getting the do-re-mi notes for "twinkle twinkle little star" for the piano, just written out with no rhythm or audio anything - writing a groom's wedding speech ("t…

The big unspoken deal is local, offline LLMs, especially if (when) easy plug-and-play finetuning becomes the norm. Suddenly the pendulum swings back the personal computing and you can have your own offline, curated mini-google. Imagine when a thousand purpose-trained open-weight LLMs appear, for everything imaginable. (E.g., if you want your own private Magic the Gathering robot you now can.)

Dude, local offline LLM's is what will be transformative. I absolutely hate that these LLM's are designed, built, governed and ran by massive tech oligarchs. There is absolutely no level playing field. It's the same "rich dudes" just getting richer.

Wake me up when you can get offline, open sourced, "peer to peer trained" LLM's that had nothing to do with the "big boys". Wake me up when those things manage to piss off "the establishment".

The current crop are all establishment. They've been neutered and approved by expensive laywers.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#853

Post by Earw0rm »

kenjackson wrote: post #845
strange_quark wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many technologies that have seemed inevitable and seen retreats under the lack of commensurate business return (the supersonic jetliner) I think this is a great analogy, not just to the current state of AI, but maybe even computers and the internet in general. Supersonic transports must've seemed amazing, inevitable, and maybe even obvious to anyone alive at the time of their debut. But hiding under that…

I think this is both right and wrong. There was a good book that came out probably 15 years ago about how technology never stops in aggregate, but individual technologies tend to grow quickly and then stall. Airplane jets were one example in the book. The reason why I partially note this as wrong is that even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don…

There are sound math reasons for skyscrapers topping out, mostly due to elevator capacity and the inability to effectively get people in and out of the floorspace as you go past a few hundred ft. There's no construction engineering reason you can't go taller - the Burj Khalifa, for example, is three times taller than a typical Western major city skyscraper - it just doesn't make economic sense unless you're a newly rich nation looking to prove a point.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#854

Post by immibis »

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.

Well, studies keep showing that using LLMs like that switches your brain off in an alarmingly short amount of time, possibly permanently, turning you into a mindless automaton intermediating between other people and your computer, and also makes you take longer to do things while thinking you're taking less time.

LLMs completely change the way people do things, in the same way that methamphetamine addictions completely change the way people do things.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#855

Post by immibis »

saati wrote: post #464
phito wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And never back it up with hard data on productivity and defect rate before and after.

Well, we have at least one bit of data now: https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

Take a quick look at that summary graph. Then read the X axis labels, and laugh, and weep.

LLMs are literally basically cocaine addiction: delivering the feeling of competence and success directly to your brain, while all actual real-world evidence points to the opposite. They also actually work for some purposes, of course.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#856

Post by ben_w »

tines wrote: post #843

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agenda…

I can even hear his voice as I read the quotation.

Such a recognisable pattern to his words, somehow never turned cliché by others trying to mimic it.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#857

Post by Earw0rm »

strange_quark wrote: post #828
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…

> There are many technologies that have seemed inevitable and seen retreats under the lack of commensurate business return (the supersonic jetliner) I think this is a great analogy, not just to the current state of AI, but maybe even computers and the internet in general. Supersonic transports must've seemed amazing, inevitable, and maybe even obvious to anyone alive at the time of their debut. But hiding under that…

From a system optimisation perspective, SSTs solved the wrong problem.

Want to save people time flying? Solve the grotesque inefficiency pit that is airport transit and check-in.

Like, I'm sorry, STILL no high speed, direct to terminal rail at JFK, LAX and a dozen other major international airports? And that's before we get to the absolute joke of "border security" and luggage check-in.

Sure, supersonic afterburning engines are dope. But it's like some 10GHz single-core CPU that pulls 1.2kW out of the wall. Like it or not, an iPhone 16 delivers far more compute utility in far more scenarios.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#858

Post by z0r »

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…

Today I learned that ChatGPT is akin to Seymour Skinner when pressed about the truth of its steamed hams recipe.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#859

Post by hyperbovine »

lblume wrote: post #110
fendy3002 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs need significant optimization or we get significant improvement on computing power while keeping the energy cost the same. It's similar with smartphone, when at the start it's not feasible because of computing power, and now we have one that can rival 2000s notebooks. LLMs is too trivial to be expensive EDIT: I presented the statement wrongly. What I mean is the use case for LLM are trivial things, it shouldn't…

Imagine telling a person from five years ago that the programs that would basically solve NLP, perform better than experts at many tasks and are hard not to anthropomorphize accidentally are actually "trivial". Good luck with that.

It still doesn't pass the Turing test, and is not close. Five years ago me would be impressed but still adamant that this is not AI, nor is it on the path to AI.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#860

Post by mlsu »

a_wild_dandan wrote: post #400

This is a fantastic framing method. Anyone who sees the future differently to you can be brushed aside as “an inevitablist,” and the only conversations worth engaging are those that already accept your premise. --- This argument so easily commits sudoku that I couldn't help myself. It's philosophical relativism, and self-immolates for the same reason -- it's inconsistent. It eats itself.

Maybe it's easier if we use a toy example.

"In the future, you will inevitably give me money. Let's discuss how much you'll give me."

vs.

"In the future, there might be some amount of money exchanged between us, in either direction. Let's discuss that."

Clearly, both discussions involve the same thing (money, us), but one is much more restricted than the other, and clearly benefits me more.

In this case of course, this isn't a discussion among individuals, but rather a social change. These are huge multinational corporations, with incredible powers of coercion. Of course they're framing things in a way that is maximally beneficial to them. I think the idea here is to raise the point that we should consider not blindly accepting their framing.

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