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LLM Inevitabilism

(tomrenner.com)
1611 points SwoopsFromAbove | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | 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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1. alexpotato ◴[] No.44577911[source]
To use the Internet as a comparison:

Phase 1 - mid to late 1990s:

- "The Internet is going to change EVERYTHING!!!"

Phase 2 - late 1990s to early 2000s:

- "It's amazing and we are all making SO much money!"

- "Oh no! The bubble burst"

- "Of course everyone could see this coming: who is going to buy 40 lb bags of dogfood or their groceries over the Internet?!?!?"

Phase 3 - mid 2000s to 2020:

- "It is astounding the amount of money being by tech companies"

- "Who could have predicted that social media would change the ENTIRE landscape??"