Dude, I'm getting a shovel factory for practically nothing. I'm easily realizing 5x value on that investment.
I'd say for an estate that I am the executor of, it probably saved me $50k in legal fees and other expenses because it helped me analyze a novel problem and organize it ask the right questions of counsel.
Another scenario i had to deal with i needed a mobile app to do something very specific for a few weeks. I specced out a very narrowly useful iphone application, built it out on the train from DC to NYC, and had it working to my satisfaction the next day. Is it production code ready for primetime? Absolutely not. But I got capability to do what I needed super quickly that my skill level is no longer up to the task to accomplish!
IMO, these things let you make power tools, but your ability to get value is capped by your ability to ask the right questions. In the enterprise, they are going to kill lots of stupid legacy software that doesn't add alot of value, but adds alot of cost.
I'd wonder how much that scales up though for the benefit of the companies that are each investing hundreds of billions and hope to see a net return. How many developers like you (presumably less of you seeing as each is more productive) or enterprises you work for paying fees (along with slimming down legacy costs paid to someone) does it take to get up in the 12 digit range?
No idea, and not my problem. I’m surprised I’ve been downvoted so much in these comments. I’m not saying OpenAI et al is a good company or good financial scenario, or good investment.
The technology is amazingly powerful. Full stop.
The constraint that drives cost is technical — semiconductor prices. Semiconductors are manufactured commodities over time, those costs will drop over time. The Sun workstation I bought for $40k in 1999 would get smoked by a raspberry pi for $40.
Even if everyone put their pencils down and stopped working on this stuff, you’d get a lot of value from the open source(-ish) models available today.
Worst case scenario, LLMs are like Excel. Little computer programs will be available to anyone to do what they need done. Excel alone changed the world in many ways.
Nah, I'll move much of it locally when it becomes cost justified to do so.
I doubt that the exponential cost explosion day is coming. When the bubble pops, the bankruptcies of many of the players will push the costs down. US policy has provided a powerful incentive for Chinese players to do what Google has done and have a lower cost delivery model anyway.
The cost iceberg with this stuff isn’t electricity, it’s the capital.
Other than Google and Facebook, the big hype players can’t produce the growth required to support the valuations. That’s why the OpenAI people started fishing for .gov backstops.
The play is get the government to pay and switch out whatever Nvidia stuff they have now with something more efficient in a few years.