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YC is wrong about LLMs for chip design

(www.zach.be)
317 points laserduck | 1 comments | 16 Nov 24 14:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.221s | source
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aubanel ◴[16 Nov 24 19:06 UTC] No.42158417[source]▶
I know nothing about chip design. But saying "Applying AI to field X won't work, because X is complex, and LLMs currently have subhuman performance at this" always sounds dubious.

VCs are not investing in the current LLM-based systems to improve X, they're investing in a future where LLM based systems will be 100x more performant.

Writing is complex, LLMs once had subhuman performance, and yet. Digital art. Music (see suno.AI) There is a pattern here.

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1. shash ◴[17 Nov 24 17:49 UTC] No.42165587[source]▶
In this specific case, it's hard to see how LLMs can get you from here to there. the problem isn't the boilerplate code like when you build a react website with them, but the really novel architectures (and architectural decisions, more importantly) that you need to make along the way. Some of those can seem very arbitrary and require deep understanding to pull off. You can't just use language-like tokens to reason this out. Fundamental understanding of the laws and rules of thumb are important.