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by robrenaud 78 days ago
Yeah, my big problem with the paper is it just might be an artifact of qwen's training process.
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In all fairness most of the unique stuff I can do is probably an artifact of my training process, so it seems unfair to deny an LLM the same accomodation.
How much did your training cost society?
This got me thinking, and it might actually even be a comparable amount. Let's estimate 12 years of schooling run at minimum $100,000 per student, at least in the US [1], and then add onto that number whatever else you may do after that, i.e. a bunch more money if paid (college) or "unpaid" (self-taught skills and improvements) education, and then the likely biggest portion for white-collar workers, yet hard-to-quantify, in experience and "value" professional work will equip one with.

Now divide the average SOTA LLM's training cost (or a guess, since these numbers aren't always published as far as I'm aware) by the number of users, or if you wanted to be more strict, the number of people it's proven to be useful for (what else would training be for), and it might not be so far off anymore?

Of course, whether it makes sense to divide and spread out the LLMs' costs across users in order to calculate an "average utility" is debatable.

[1] https://www.publicschoolreview.com/average-spending-student-...