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    LLM Inevitabilism

    (tomrenner.com)
    1613 points SwoopsFromAbove | 14 comments | | HN request time: 2.49s | source | bottom
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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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    dbalatero ◴[] No.44570964[source]
    They might generate 10b ARR, but they lose a lot more than that. Their paid users are a fraction of the free riders.

    https://www.wheresyoured.at/openai-is-a-systemic-risk-to-the...

    replies(3): >>44571830 #>>44572286 #>>44573506 #
    1. Cthulhu_ ◴[] No.44571830[source]
    That's fixable, a gradual adjusting of the free tier will happen soon enough once they stop pumping money into it. Part of this is also a war of attrition though, who has the most money to keep a free tier the longest and attract the most people. Very familiar strategy for companies trying to gain market share.
    replies(4): >>44572182 #>>44572199 #>>44572277 #>>44572372 #
    2. sc68cal ◴[] No.44572182[source]
    That assumes that everyone is willing to pay for it. I don't think that's an assumption that will be true.
    replies(3): >>44572633 #>>44572986 #>>44573012 #
    3. gmerc ◴[] No.44572199[source]
    Competition is almost guaranteed to drive price close to cost of delivery especially if they can't pay trump to ban open source, particularly chinese. With no ability to play the thiel monopoly playbook, their investors would never make their money back if not for government capture and sweet sweet taxpayer military contracts.
    replies(1): >>44573094 #
    4. kelseyfrog ◴[] No.44572277[source]
    Absolutely, free-tier AI won’t stay "free" forever. It’s only a matter of time before advertisers start paying to have their products woven into your AI conversations. It’ll creep in quietly—maybe a helpful brand suggestion, a recommended product "just for you," or a well-timed promo in a tangential conversation. Soon enough though, you’ll wonder if your LLM genuinely likes that brand of shoes, or if it's just doing its job.

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    5. SJC_Hacker ◴[] No.44572372[source]
    I agree, its easily fixable by injecting ads into the responses for the free tier and probably eventually even the lower paid tiers to some extent
    replies(1): >>44572524 #
    6. amrocha ◴[] No.44572524[source]
    Literally nobody would talk to a robot that spits back ads at them
    replies(4): >>44572645 #>>44573292 #>>44574101 #>>44575780 #
    7. mike-cardwell ◴[] No.44572633[source]
    Those that aren't willing to pay for it directly, can still use it for free, but will just have to tolerate product placement.
    8. kridsdale3 ◴[] No.44572645{3}[source]
    Hundreds of millions of people watch TV and listen to Radio that is at least 30% ad content per hour.
    9. ebiester ◴[] No.44572986[source]
    Consider the general research - in all, it doesn't eliminate people, but let's say it shakes out to speeding up developers 10% over all tasks. (That includes creating tickets, writing documentation, unblocking bugs, writing scripts, building proof of concepts, and more rote refactoring, but does not solve the harder problems or stop us from doing the hard work of software engineering that doesn't involve lines of code.)

    That means that it's worth up to 10% of a developer's salary as a tool. And more importantly, smaller teams go faster, so it might be worth that full 10%.

    Now, assume other domains end up similar - some less, some more. So, that's a large TAM.

    10. LordDragonfang ◴[] No.44573012[source]
    It very much does not assume that, only that some fraction will have become accustomed to using it to the point of not giving it up. In fact, they could probably remain profitable without a single new customer, given the number of subscribers they already have.
    11. xedrac ◴[] No.44573094[source]
    > especially if they can't pay trump to ban open source?

    Huh? Do you mean for official government use?

    12. gomox ◴[] No.44573292{3}[source]
    I predict this comment to enter the Dropbox/iPod hall of shame of discussion forum skeptics.
    13. johnnyanmac ◴[] No.44574101{3}[source]
    You still have faith in society after decades of ads being spit at them.
    14. SJC_Hacker ◴[] No.44575780{3}[source]
    That's pretty much what search engines are nowadays