[Cthulhu_]

There's potential there (with the pocket-PhDs), the question is whether it'll actually make a measurable difference in the long run. I mean I'm sure it will make a difference, the question is whether it's what they say it will be, and whether it'll be financially viable. At the current burn rate of the AI companies, it isn't - before long the first ones will have to give up. They won't die, they'll be subsumed into their competitors.

Anyway, the challenge is making a difference. Current-day LLMs can, for example, generate stories and books; one tweet said "this can generate 1000 screenplays a day". Which sounds impressive by the numbers, but books, screenplays, etc were never about volume.

Same with PhDs - is there a shortage of them? Does adding potentially infinite PhDs (whatever they are) to a project make it better, or does it just make... more?

This is the main difference with the industrial revolution - it, for example, introduced machines that turned 10 people jobs into 1 person jobs. I don't think LLMs will do something like that, it'll just output 10 people's worth of Stuff that will need some use.

I don't think anyone ever asked for 1000 screenplays a day, or infinite PhD's for $20. But then, nobody asked for a riderless carriage yet here we are.

[Windchaser]

> Same with PhDs - is there a shortage of them? Does adding potentially infinite PhDs (whatever they are) to a project make it better, or does it just make... more?

Yes, there is still a large demand for people with analytical thinking, a deep knowledge base, and good problem-solving skills. This demand shows up broadly across STEM fields, and it's a major reason that these fields pay relatively high.

Even just thinking of R&D, there is an immense amount of work left to be done in basic science. Research is throttled partly by a lack of cheap graduate lab labor. (If that physical + mental labor became much cheaper, the costs of research would shift - what does it take to get reagants? What does it take to build more lab space, and provide water and light? Etc.)

The present issue is that current AI does not really offer the same capabilities as a good grad student or PhD. Not just physically, as in, we don't have good robotics yet, but mentally. LLMs do not exhibit good judgment or problem-solving skills, like a good PhD does. And they don't exhibit continual learning.

No clue on when these will change, but yes, a cheap AI with solid problem-solving skills and good judgment would absolutely upend our economy.

[jodrellblank]

> "I don't think LLMs will do something like that, it'll just output 10 people's worth of Stuff that will need some use."

This is why I said "isn’t the usual “LLMs aren’t going to be AGI”", but you still went straight for "LLMs aren't AGI", which was not in question.

AGI is what OpenAI says they are going for. That's the goal of all this trillion dollar investment, not to output 1000 screenplays a day, but to takeover the world, basically. What would infinite PhDs discover if they could hold all of Arxive in their 'heads' at once and see patterns in every experiment that's ever been done? What could they engineer and manufacture if they could 'concentrate' on millions of steps of a manufacturing process at once without getting fatigued or bored? What ideas could they test if they could be PhD level in a dozen subjects all at once?

[ineedasername]

A PhD generating knowledge has a cumulative effect that an equivalent intelligence generating prose purely for entertainment does not. And a whole bunch of that work isn’t really about novel insights, it’s about filling in gaps and doing knowledge work that assists people who are capable of having those insights. AI doing this enables them, also making it possible for more people to do the same.