[imiric]

> If scaling doesn't stall out soon, then I honestly have no idea what to expect the visibility curve to look like.

We are seeing diminishing returns on scaling already. LLMs released this year have been marginal improvements over their predecessors. Graphs on benchmarks[1] are hitting an asymptote.

The improvements we are seeing are related to engineering and value added services. This is why "agents" are the latest buzzword most marketing is clinging on. This is expected, and good, in a sense. The tech is starting to deliver actual value as it's maturing.

I reckon AI companies can still squeeze out a few years of good engineering around the current generation of tools. The question is what happens if there are no ML breakthroughs in that time. The industry desperately needs them for the promise of ASI, AI 2027, and the rest of the hyped predictions to become reality. Otherwise it will be a rough time when the bubble actually bursts.

[1]: https://llm-stats.com/

[bugbuddy]

The problem with LLMs and all other modern statistical large-data-driven solutions’ approach is that it tries to collapse the entire problem space of general problem solving to combinatorial search of the permutations of previously solved problems. Yes, this approach works well for many problems as we can see with the results with huge amount of data and processing utilized.

One implicit assumption is that all problems can be solved with some permutations of existing solutions. The other assumption is the approach can find those permutations and can do so efficiently.

Essentially, the true-believers want you to think that rearranging some bits in their cloud will find all the answers to the universe. I am sure Socrates would not find that a good place to stop the investigation.

[imiric]

Right. I do think that just the capability to find and generate interesting patterns from existing data can be very valuable. It has many applications in many fields, and can genuinely be transformative for society.

But, yeah, the question is whether that approach can be defined as intelligence, and whether it can be applicable to all problems and tasks. I'm highly skeptical of this, but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I'm more concerned about the problems and dangers of this tech today, than whatever some entrepreneurs are promising for the future.

[zer00eyz]

> We are seeing diminishing returns on scaling already. LLMs released this year have been marginal improvements over their predecessors. Graphs on benchmarks[1] are hitting an asymptote.

This isnt just a software problem. IF you go look at the hardware side you see that same flat line (IPC is flat generation over generation). There are also power and heat problems that are going to require some rather exotic and creative solutions if companies are looking to hardware for gains.