You seem pretty sure of your position and nothing I can say will change your mind. Maybe you’re right and lots of people like me are wrong. Quite frankly it would be massively surprising if all these investments, research, and product development ended in nothing especially with this rate of adoption, but hey… it’s not impossible, just very unlikely (IMHO ofc) 👋
Of course it won’t end up with nothing. Me and you will still use LLMs on our desktops, and make stuff with it.
All I’m saying is that Jen from accounts receivable won’t be using LLMs in Excel sheets, because on the one hand it’s stupid and on the other hand it’s not economical. And if that’s true, then the current hype will result in an equivalently sized crater in the US economy.
And I’m saying this especially because the rate of adoption is unsustainable, we can’t pay for so many people to use this tech for so little, it either has to do much, much more or be adopted much, much less. I only expect that gap to close, and the fear is that it will close with a lot of force.
Yeah but if Jen’s work does not change, then where is the revolution? All previous revolutions moved Jen around, from the fields to the assembly line, then from the assembly line to the office, then from the office to a computer and arguably home.
How does Jen using Excel and using an LLM to calculate something in the books a “revolution”? And where is it happening then? Whose work has gotten “revolutionized”? What is actually going to happen if it hasn’t already? Like precisely?
And yeah, cost per token is dropping, but since all progress in the past year at least has increased tokens per query, cost per query is actually going up. And we can’t even be sure that the actual cost per token is going down, since OpenAI can set any price at this point, since it is losing money either way. We don’t know the cost per token, only the price per token.
Again, how is this different to the invention of the microwave? What makes it “revolution”-scaled, other than the money sunk into it?
Jen’s job will change. In some cases it will disappear just like technology replaced Jen’s grandma who was a centralist.
Okay, but when? Studies show that Jen’s job has not changed yet at all so far. What’s needed for it to change?
It’s in terms of impact. The microwave made it possible to heat food in an office. AI may make the same office obsolete.
How specifically?
The combined total yearly revenue of the AI industry is by a generous estimate around five billion. That is less money that Mario Kart 8 made in revenue. And we didn’t need to restart nuclear reactors to run Mario Kart 8.
And that revenue is mostly made by OpenAI, mostly by selling to Microsoft, which basically owns it, so one might ask, how does that even count.
That’s a $1M question. IMHO it will happen as soon as there will be a killer application. One of those thousands startups will develop something solving a big problem.
Imagine if a company could deliver the complete automation of software development. Not only all companies would buy it, but the AI would would work 24/7 improving itself. That’s the kind of big breakthrough we are talking about.
I can’t give you a date, just that I’m strongly convinced that something like that will happen.
You seem pretty sure of your position and nothing I can say will change your mind. Maybe you’re right and lots of people like me are wrong. Quite frankly it would be massively surprising if all these investments, research, and product development ended in nothing especially with this rate of adoption, but hey… it’s not impossible, just very unlikely (IMHO ofc) 👋
Of course it won’t end up with nothing. Me and you will still use LLMs on our desktops, and make stuff with it.
All I’m saying is that Jen from accounts receivable won’t be using LLMs in Excel sheets, because on the one hand it’s stupid and on the other hand it’s not economical. And if that’s true, then the current hype will result in an equivalently sized crater in the US economy.
And I’m saying this especially because the rate of adoption is unsustainable, we can’t pay for so many people to use this tech for so little, it either has to do much, much more or be adopted much, much less. I only expect that gap to close, and the fear is that it will close with a lot of force.
Jen from accounts will not know she’s using an LLM. This is the part you don’t get.
Also the cost per token is dropping. Just like any technology, it’s being optimised.
Yeah but if Jen’s work does not change, then where is the revolution? All previous revolutions moved Jen around, from the fields to the assembly line, then from the assembly line to the office, then from the office to a computer and arguably home.
How does Jen using Excel and using an LLM to calculate something in the books a “revolution”? And where is it happening then? Whose work has gotten “revolutionized”? What is actually going to happen if it hasn’t already? Like precisely?
And yeah, cost per token is dropping, but since all progress in the past year at least has increased tokens per query, cost per query is actually going up. And we can’t even be sure that the actual cost per token is going down, since OpenAI can set any price at this point, since it is losing money either way. We don’t know the cost per token, only the price per token.
Again, how is this different to the invention of the microwave? What makes it “revolution”-scaled, other than the money sunk into it?
Jen’s job will change. In some cases it will disappear just like technology replaced Jen’s grandma who was a centralist.
It’s in terms of impact. The microwave made it possible to heat food in an office. AI may make the same office obsolete.
Okay, but when? Studies show that Jen’s job has not changed yet at all so far. What’s needed for it to change?
How specifically?
The combined total yearly revenue of the AI industry is by a generous estimate around five billion. That is less money that Mario Kart 8 made in revenue. And we didn’t need to restart nuclear reactors to run Mario Kart 8.
And that revenue is mostly made by OpenAI, mostly by selling to Microsoft, which basically owns it, so one might ask, how does that even count.
That’s a $1M question. IMHO it will happen as soon as there will be a killer application. One of those thousands startups will develop something solving a big problem.
Imagine if a company could deliver the complete automation of software development. Not only all companies would buy it, but the AI would would work 24/7 improving itself. That’s the kind of big breakthrough we are talking about.
I can’t give you a date, just that I’m strongly convinced that something like that will happen.