LLMs Aren't Inevitable

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• Hacker News
• If you don’t use AI to scan for security bugs yourself, someone else will likely be using AI to find them first. So in that way, at least, LLMs could be considered inevitable.
  by skybrian
• The first part of the article is a thoughtful framework. The conclusion that LLMs are not inevitable because they aren't useful or that their utility can be substituted by humans is an extraordinarily flimsy claim.
  by samuelknight
• This was published today, I had to check the date to be sure. I used to be an applied researcher working in big tech and for the things I wanted to build if I had to pick between LLMs and hand picking a team of 100 from the best programmers / researchers in the world I would pick the LLMs. Of course the combination would be even better. I've had LLMs immediately understand concepts that took me months to effectively communicate to a colleague and there are some concepts I was unable to communicate to any other human at all. Then the LLMs could build what I needed in less time it would take me to set up a meeting about it.
  by cjbgkagh
• Ironically, this might be the first time I wished an article was written by AI.
  by jrm4
• > Any actor that's at all serious in their field is, sooner or later, going to hit a point where LLMs cease being useful to them and actively hinder their further progress, and we absolutely do not see the massively overwhelming advantages that LLMs would need to have in order to become inevitable.

  I can only conclude from this that I am not at all serious in my field. That's okay. I'm too busy enjoying myself.

  by Leynos
• > The technology can, in volume of adequate output or in quality of output, overwhelmingly outclass what alternative technologies can do. A moderate improvement isn't really enough to force inevitability: it has to be a massive difference.

  > Now we come to the question of whether or not the difference that LLMs bring to the table is sufficiently overwhelming to make their adoption inevitable, and on this I think the answer is a clear no. As established above, LLMs just can't do top-flight work at all: at the heights of basically any discipline, we're still very much relying on unaugmented human work.

  The clear flaw here is that cost isn't taken into account. A new technology needs to be better than the status quo at a given cost/price point.

  Examples: mass produced textiles, photography, IKEA. Ostensibly not the highest quality, but the cheapest at a price point.

  by djoldman
• "The first point is the question of whether an LLM can do work not markedly inferior to that of a human doing the same task or not. This one is debatable. An LLM absolutely cannot produce work to the highest human standards, or even a good human standard at the moment, and it's unlikely that it ever will."

  This could have been fine maybe two years ago, but saying that in the era when LLMs are solving Millenium Prize Problems is incredibly obnoxious. All those opinionated "AI articles" feel like ragebait at this point.

  by gordian-mind
• The fact that the author is using PowerBI as the example makes me think they are completely oblivious of the actual impact and utility LLMs have in other fields such as programming. Claiming it's useless and that anything it outputs is "markedly inferior to that of a human doing the same task" is an absurd basis to use for their argument.
  by Kiro