[ben_w]

You don't have to leave LLM code alone, it's fine to change it — unless, I guess, you're doing some kind of LLM vibe-code-golfing?

But this does remind me of a previous co-worker. Wrote something to convert from a custom data store to a database, his version took 20 minutes on some inputs. Swore it couldn't possibly be improved. Obviously ridiculous because it didn't take 20 minutes to load from the old data store, nor to load from the new database. Over the next few hours of looking at very mediocre code, I realised it was doing an unnecessary O(n^2) check, confirmed with the CTO it wasn't business-critical, got rid of it, and the same conversion on the same data ran in something like 200ms.

Over a decade before LLMs.

[nottorp]

We all do that, sometimes where it’s time critical sometimes where it isn’t.

But I keep being told “AI” is the second coming of Ahura Mazda so it shouldn’t do stuff like that right?

[ben_w]

> Ahura Mazda

Niche reference, I like it.

But… I only hear of scammers who say, and psychosis sufferers who think, LLMs are *already* that competent.

Future AI? Sure, lots of sane-seeming people also think it could go far beyond us. Special purpose ones have in very narrow domains. But current LLMs are only good enough to be useful and potentially economically disruptive, they're not even close to wildly superhuman like Stockfish is.

[CamperBob2]

Sure. If you ask ChatGPT to play chess, it will put up an amateur-level effort at best. Stockfish will indeed wipe the floor with it. But what happens when you ask Stockfish to write a Space Invaders game?

ChatGPT will get better at chess over time. Stockfish will not get better at anything except chess. That's kind of a big difference.

[ben_w]

> ChatGPT will get better at chess over time

Oddly, LLMs got worse at specifically chess: https://dynomight.net/chess/

But even to the general point, there's absolutely no agreement how much better the current architectures can ultimately get, nor how quickly they can get there.

Do they have potential for unbounded improvements, albeit at exponential cost for each linear incremental improvement? Or will they asymptomatically approach someone with 5 years experience, 10 years experience, a lifetime of experience, or a higher level than any human?

If I had to bet, I'd say current models have an asymptomatic growth converging to a merely "ok" performance; and separately claim that even if they're actually unbounded with exponential cost for linear returns, we can't afford the training cost needed to make them act like someone with even just 6 years professional experience in any given subject.

Which is still a lot. Especially as it would be acting like it had about as much experience in every other subject at the same time. Just… not a literal Ahura Mazda.

[CamperBob2]

If I had to bet, I'd say current models have an asymptomatic growth converging to a merely "ok" performance

(Shrug) People with actual money to spend are betting twelve figures that you're wrong.

Should be fun to watch it shake out from up here in the cheap seats.

[ben_w]

Nah, trillion dollars is about right for "ok". Percentage point of the global economy in cost, automate 2 percent and get a huge margin. We literally set more than that on actual fire each year.

For "pretty good", it would be worth 14 figures, over two years. The global GDP is 14 figures. Even if this only automated 10% of the economy, it pays for itself after a decade.

For "Ahura Mazda", it would easily be worth 16 figures, what with that being the principal God and god of the sky in Zoroastrianism, and the only reason it stops at 16 is the implausibility of people staying organised for longer to get it done.

[nottorp]

> People with actual money to spend are betting

... but those "people with actual money to spend" have burned money on fads before. Including on "AI", several times before the current hysterics.

If you're a good actor/psychologist, it's probably a good business model to figure out how to get VC money and how to justify your startup failing so they give you money for the next startup.

[CamperBob2]

"I'm taking this talking dog right back to the pound. It told me to short NVDA, and you should see the buffer overflow bugs in the C++ code it wrote. Totally overhyped. I don't get it."

[nottorp]

"We hear you have been calling our deity a talking dog. Please enter the red door for reeducation."