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LLM Inevitabilism

(tomrenner.com)
1616 points SwoopsFromAbove | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.205s | source
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lsy ◴[] No.44568114[source]
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 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.

There are many technologies that have seemed inevitable and seen retreats under the lack of commensurate business return (the supersonic jetliner), and several that seemed poised to displace both old tech and labor but have settled into specific use cases (the microwave oven). Given the lack of a sufficiently profitable business model, it feels as likely as not that LLMs settle somewhere a little less remarkable, and hopefully less annoying, than today's almost universally disliked attempts to cram it everywhere.

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eric-burel ◴[] No.44568416[source]
Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet. Using an LLM UI like open ai is like we just figured fire and you use it to warm you hands (still impressive when you think about it, but not worth the burns), while LLM development is about building car engines (here is you return on investment).
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Jensson ◴[] No.44568953[source]
> Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet

There are thousands of startups doing exactly that right now, why do you think this will work when all evidence points towards it not working? Or why else would it not already have revolutionized everything a year or two ago when everyone started doing this?

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eric-burel ◴[] No.44569274[source]
Most of them are a bunch of prompts and don't even have actual developers. For the good reason that there is no training system yet and the wording of how you call the people that build these system isn't even there or clearly defined. Local companies haven't even setup a proper internal LLM or at least a contract with a provider. I am in France so probably lagging behind USA a bit especially NY/SF but the word "LLM developer" is just arriving now and mostly under the pressure of isolated developers and companies like me. This feel really really early stage.
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__loam ◴[] No.44569675[source]
The smartest and most well funded people on the planet have been trying and failing to get value out of this technology for years and the best we've come up with so far is some statistically unreliable coding assistants. Hardly the revolution its proponents keep eagerly insisting we're seeing.
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liveoneggs ◴[] No.44571073[source]
my company has already fired a bunch of people in favor of LLMs so they are realizing all kinds of value
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1. Capricorn2481 ◴[] No.44571241[source]
Only as much as replacing all your devs with a frog is "realizing value"