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LLM Inevitabilism

(tomrenner.com)
1619 points SwoopsFromAbove | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.222s | 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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alonsonic ◴[] No.44570711[source]
I'm confused with your second point. LLM companies are not making any money from current models? Openai generates 10b USD ARR and has 100M MAUs. Yes they are running at a loss right now but that's because they are racing to improve models. If they stopped today to focus on optimization of their current models to minimize operating cost and monetizing their massive user base you think they don't have a successful business model? People use this tools daily, this is inevitable.
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lordnacho ◴[] No.44570853[source]
Are you saying they'd be profitable if they didn't pour all the winnings into research?

From where I'm standing, the models are useful as is. If Claude stopped improving today, I would still find use for it. Well worth 4 figures a year IMO.

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1. vikramkr ◴[] No.44571742[source]
That's calculating value against not having LLMs and current competitors. If they stopped improving but their competitors didn't, then the question would be the incremental cost of Claude (financial, adjusted for switching costs, etc) against the incremental advantage against the next best competitor that did continue improving. Lock in is going to be hard to accomplish around a product that has success defined by its generalizability and adaptability.

Basically, they can stop investing in research either when 1) the tech matures and everyone is out of ideas or 2) they have monopoly power from either market power or oracle style enterprise lock in or something. Otherwise they'll fall behind and you won't have any reason to pay for it anymore. Fun thing about "perfect" competition is that everyone competes their profits to zero