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LLM Inevitabilism

(tomrenner.com)
1612 points SwoopsFromAbove | 7 comments | | HN request time: 0.537s | 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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brokencode ◴[] No.44572627[source]
> “most people agree that the output is trite and unpleasant to consume”

That is a such a wild claim. People like the output of LLMs so much that ChatGPT is the fastest growing app ever. It and other AI apps like Perplexity are now beginning to challenge Google’s search dominance.

Sure, probably not a lot of people would go out and buy a novel or collection of poetry written by ChatGPT. But that doesn’t mean the output is unpleasant to consume. It pretty undeniably produces clear and readable summaries and explanations.

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Wowfunhappy ◴[] No.44572887[source]
...I do wonder what percent of ChatGPT usage is just students cheating on their homework, though.
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genghisjahn ◴[] No.44573066[source]
Neal Stephenson has a recent post that covers some of this. Also links to teachers talking about many students just putting all their work into chatgpt and turning it in.

https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/emerson-ai-and-the-for...

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frozenseven ◴[] No.44573728[source]
He links to Reddit, a site where most people are aggressively against AI. So, not necessarily a representative slice of reality.
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genghisjahn ◴[] No.44574014[source]
He links to a post about a teacher’s expertise with students using AI. The fact that it’s on Reddit is irrelevant.
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1. frozenseven ◴[] No.44574238[source]
If you're going to champion something that comes from a place of extreme political bias, you could at least acknowledge it.
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2. Capricorn2481 ◴[] No.44574993[source]
This is a baffling response. The politics are completely irrelevant to this topic. Pretty much every American is distrustful of big tech and is completely unaware of what the current administration has conceded to AI companies, with larger scandals taking the spotlight, so there hasn't been a chance for one party or the other to rally around a talking point with AI.

People don't like AI because its impact on the internet is filling it with garbage, not because of tribalism.

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3. frozenseven ◴[] No.44575328[source]
>This is a baffling response.

Likewise.

95+% of the time I see a response like this, it's from one particular side of the political aisle. You know the one. Politics has everything to do with this.

>what the current administration has conceded to AI companies

lol, I unironically think that they're not lax enough when it comes to AI.

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4. intended ◴[] No.44575665{3}[source]
Based on your response and logic - no dem should read stuff written by repub voters, or if they do read it, dismiss their account because it cannot be … what?

Not sure how we get to dismissing the teacher subreddit, to be honest.

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5. fireflash38 ◴[] No.44576027[source]
Why? So you could discard it faster?

Read things from people that you disagree with.

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6. frozenseven ◴[] No.44576635[source]
Because I'm not going to play a game where the other side gets to ignore the rules.
7. Capricorn2481 ◴[] No.44577985{3}[source]
> 95+% of the time I see a response like this, it's from one particular side of the political aisle. You know the one. Politics has everything to do with this

I really don't, honestly you're being so vague and it's such a bipartisan issue I can't piece together who you're mad at. Godspeed.