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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#901

Post by famouswaffles »

JohnMakin wrote: post #862
brokencode wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “most people agree that the output is trite and unpleasant to consume” That is a such a wild claim. People like the output of LLMs so much that ChatGPT is the fastest growing app ever. It and other AI apps like Perplexity are now beginning to challenge Google’s search dominance. Sure, probably not a lot of people would go out and buy a novel or collection of poetry written by ChatGPT. But that doesn’t mean the outp…

> That is a such a wild claim. People like the output of LLMs so much that ChatGPT is the fastest growing app ever. And this kind of meaningless factoid was immediately usurped by the Threads app release, which IMO is kind of a pointless app. Maybe let's find a more meaningful metric before saying someone else's claim is wild.

Asking your Instagram Users to hop on to your ready made TikTok Clone is hardly in the same sphere as spinning up that much users from nothing.

And while Threads growth and usage stalled, ChatGPT is very much still growing and has *far* more monthly visits than threads.

There's really nothing meaningless about ChatGPT being the 5th most visited site on the planet, not even 3 years after release. Threads doesn't make the top 50.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#902

Post by ryankrage77 »

layer8 wrote: post #547
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 also like reliable and deterministic behavior, like when they press a specific button it does the same thing 99.9% of the time, and not slightly different things 90% of the time and something rather off the mark 10% of the time (give and take some percentage points). It's not clear that LLMs will get us to the former.

To a user, many modern UI's are unpredictable and unreliable anyway. "I've always done it this way, but it's not working...".

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#903

Post by Aeolun »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #864
kenjackson wrote: post #845

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don't think LLMs share that characteristic today I think they pretty strongly do The solution seems to be "just lower your standards for acceptable margin of error to whatever the LLM is capable of producing" which should be concerning and absolutely unacceptable to anyone calling themselves an Engineer

> absolutely unacceptable to anyone calling themselves an Engineer

Isn’t that exactly what engineers do? Even very strong bridges aren’t designed to survive every possible eventuality.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#904

Post by bloppe »

xandrius wrote: post #804
bloppe wrote: post #781

This inevitabilist framing rests on an often unspoken assumption: that LLM's will decisively outperform human capabilities in myriad domains. If that assumption holds true, then the inevitabilist quotes featured in the article are convincing to me. If LLM's turn out to be less worthwhile at scale than many people assume, the inevitabilist interpretation is another dream of AI summer. Burying the core assumption and f…

LLMs have already been absolutely worthwhile in many of my projects, so I guess it's already inevitable for me.

I agree that I get a lot of value out of LLMs. But I also have to clean up after them a lot of the time. It's a far cry from being able to replace a skilled developer working on something non-trivial.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#905

Post by layer8 »

ryankrage77 wrote: post #902
layer8 wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also like reliable and deterministic behavior, like when they press a specific button it does the same thing 99.9% of the time, and not slightly different things 90% of the time and something rather off the mark 10% of the time (give and take some percentage points). It's not clear that LLMs will get us to the former.

To a user, many modern UI's are unpredictable and unreliable anyway. "I've always done it this way, but it's not working...".

I agree, but UIs don't need to be that way. Non-smart light switches, thermostats, household appliances, etc. generally aren't that way, and that’s why many people prefer them, and expect UIs to work similarly — which they overall typically still do.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#906

Post by brokencode »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #786
ants_everywhere wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is a such a wild claim. Some people who hate LLMs are absolutely convinced everyone else hates them. I've talked with a few of them. I think it's a form of filter bubble.

This isn't some niche outcry: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2024/03/19/is-the-p... And that was 18 months ago. Yes, believe it or not, people eventually wake up and realize slop is slop. But like everything else with LLM development, tech is trying to brute force it on people anyway.

Yup, any day now people will suddenly realize that LLMs suck and you were right all along. Any day now..

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#907

Post by brokencode »

xnx wrote: post #738
brokencode wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “most people agree that the output is trite and unpleasant to consume” That is a such a wild claim. People like the output of LLMs so much that ChatGPT is the fastest growing app ever. It and other AI apps like Perplexity are now beginning to challenge Google’s search dominance. Sure, probably not a lot of people would go out and buy a novel or collection of poetry written by ChatGPT. But that doesn’t mean the outp…

> AI apps like Perplexity are now beginning to challenge Google’s search dominance Now that is a wild claim. ChatGPT might be challenging Google's dominance, but Perplexity is nothing.

It’s not a wild claim, though maybe your interpretation is wild.

I never said Perplexity individually is challenging Google, but rather as part of a group of apps including ChatGPT, which you conveniently left out of your quote.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#909

Post by scarface_74 »

Lu2025 wrote: post #899
Earw0rm wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

They don't optimize for our convenience, they optimize for their profit.

Such airports removing moving walkways because they reduce profits in stores…

https://nypost.com/2025/05/27/lifestyle/airports-are-removin...

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#910

Post by komali2 »

komali2 wrote: post #598

A lot of people are responding with "But it is inevitable." So far as I can tell they're pointing at the normal capitalistic measures to indicate this - OpenAI has a katrillion dollar MMR and investors are throwing money everywhere and thus this will happen. Or, LLMs generate a lot of value, or make labor more efficient, so therefore it must start replacing workers one way or another. Well, great, then I will add ano…

At worst captured, at best gridlocked*
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