Sure steam engines may not fit every use but from them we learned to make other kinds of engines right? But yeah I'm sure 'LLM' will either change scope/definition or we'll make new stuff to fit other use cases kind of like diffusion models for images vs llm for text generation.
This is such a rich-country-centric view that I can't stand. LLMs have already given the world maybe it's greatest gift ever -- access to a teacher.
Think of the 800 million poor children in the world and their access to a Kahn academy level teacher on any subject imaginable with a cellphone/computer as all they need. How could that not have value and is pearl clutching drawing skills becoming devalued really all you can think about it?
you’ll never be able to make a LLM that’s any good at playing chess,
They said that about machines and then we all laughed at the mechanical turk hoax. Now machines can almost beat you in Go.
I'll say it again -- It is hubris and you will obviously be wrong to try to predict the future or what will have value.
like come on -- superpositioning exists and we've no clue how consciousness works (Bostrom thinks its just maths) but you have this crystal ball full of certainty. It smells...
define design -- I had Chat GPT dream up new musical instruments and then we implemented one. It wrote all the code and architecture, though I did have to prod/help it along in places.
But since we don't understand how cognition works in living beings almost at all -- who's to say that's not how 'actual thinking' works other than 'I know it when I see it!"
No, the thing I'm comparing is our inability to discern where a new technology will lead and our history of smirking at things like books, cars, the internet and email, AI, etc.
The first steam engines pulling coal out of the ground were so inefficient they wouldn't make sense for any use case than working to get the fuel that powers them. You could definitely smirk and laugh about engines vs 10k men and be totally right in that moment, and people were.
The more history you learn though, you more you realize this is not only a hubrisy thing, it's also futile as how we feel about the proliferation of technology has never had an impact on that technology's proliferation.
And, to be clear, I'm not saying no humans will work or have anything to do -- I'm saying significantly MORE humans will have nothing to do. Sure you still need all kinds of people even if the robots design and build themselves mostly, but it would be an order of magnitude less than the people needed otherwise.
