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Comment by ptsneves

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Comment by ptsneves

To me this feels peak doomerism, and frankly tiring. The consequences of a total disaster are laid out in big detail but the possible causes leading to the disaster are...assumed and literally not addressed in the comment.

I mean, the premise is "who's going to get wiped[...]?", but the harder question is why would they? And that answer is not trivial because these companies are actually generating money and are competitive. The people and investors running these companies and investing are also not just standing still.

I think one can assume these companies are all a massive scam, but having used LLMs in my day to day every day from the very same companies this article talks about, I don't feel so. I only see the integration of intelligence becoming deeper, and even if cheaper per unit(token), many more tokens will be required. Productivity unlocked is further unlocking business and social opportunities we are only now exploring and getting to know. In the very essence it is very easy to see how this will turn out badly: after all a collapse passes all the known floors on the way down, but we have no idea where we are going up with this technology. I don't buy the comparison with the dotcom bubble because it is very easily falsified by simple metrics as the profitability of these technologies in the present. In the dotcom companies were not profitable, and many other counter examples disprove the comparison applicability. I will not even comment on the comparison with the subprime loans which were related to real estate, which has very little unknown upside.

Anyway, have some faith people this is hacker news, and with LLMs I never was able to do so much cool tinkering in my whole life. I have custom modifications on my gnome shell, I have privately developed file servers, I have automations that make use of my rooted TV, I have a prototype web page to help my folk's small business. I am able to support and learn from the LLM about topics that would be too expensive to get input from. For example with a calibrated microphone the LLM generated the custom equalized bands for my type of amplituner. It looked at a picture of my living room and suggested moving certain furniture like the curtains and measure it. With LLMs I was able to take pictures of nice rugs in the internet and visualize them in my living room before actually buying to great effect. So many possibilities... Focusing on the known unknowns is the easy part, let us have our imaginations run wild and let the whimsical hacker spirit return.

Replies ptsneves · 15h
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