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LLM Inevitabilism

(tomrenner.com)
1616 points SwoopsFromAbove | 4 comments | 15 Jul 25 04:35 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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delichon ◴[15 Jul 25 04:49 UTC] No.44567913[source]▶
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 we can't wish it away.
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NBJack ◴[15 Jul 25 05:00 UTC] No.44567951[source]▶
Ironically, this is exactly the technique for arguing that the blog mentions.

Remember the revolutionary, seemingly inevitable tech that was poised to rewrite how humans thought about transportation? The incredible amounts of hype, the secretive meetings disclosing the device, etc.? That turned out to be the self-balancing scooter known as a Segway?

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HPsquared ◴[15 Jul 25 05:03 UTC] No.44567966[source]▶
1. The Segway had very low market penetration but a lot of PR. LLMs and diffusion models have had massive organic growth.

2. Segways were just ahead of their time: portable lithium-ion powered urban personal transportation is getting pretty big now.

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jdiff ◴[15 Jul 25 05:24 UTC] No.44568065[source]▶
Massive, organic, and unprofitable. And as soon as it's no longer free, as soon as the VC funding can no longer sustain it, an enormous fraction of usage and users will all evaporate.

The Segway always had a high barrier to entry. Currently for ChatGPT you don't even need an account, and everyone already has a Google account.

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1. lumost ◴[15 Jul 25 05:30 UTC] No.44568094{5}[source]▶
The free tiers might be tough to sustain, but it’s hard to imagine that they are that problematic for OpenAI et al. GPUs will become cheaper, and smaller/faster models will reach the same level of capability.
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2. throwawayoldie ◴[15 Jul 25 15:24 UTC] No.44572152[source]▶
[citation needed]
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3. ◴[15 Jul 25 17:00 UTC] No.44573321[source]▶
4. jdiff ◴[15 Jul 25 17:03 UTC] No.44573372[source]▶
Eh, I kinda see what they're saying. They haven't become cheaper at all, but GPUs have increased in performance, and the amount of performance you get for each dollar spent has increased.

Relative to its siblings, things have gotten worse. A GTX 970 could hit 60% of the performance of the full Titan X at 35% of the price. A 5070 hits 40% of a full 5090 for 27% of the price. That's overall less series-relative performance you're getting, for an overall increased price, by about $100 when adjusting for inflation.

But if you have a fixed performance baseline you need to hit, as long as tech gets improving, things will eventually be cheaper for that baseline. As long as you aren't also trying to improve in a way that moves the baseline up. Which so far has been the only consistent MO of the AI industry.