Comment by jonas21
18 hours ago
> given that title, it becomes somewhat obvious that the article itself doesn't need to exist.
Why? I regularly hear people trying to argue that LLMs are an environmental distaster.
18 hours ago
> given that title, it becomes somewhat obvious that the article itself doesn't need to exist.
Why? I regularly hear people trying to argue that LLMs are an environmental distaster.
Because LLMs are an environmental disaster.
It's not about any individual usage. It's the global technology that is yet to prove to be useful and that already have bad for the environment.
Any new usage should be free of impact on the environment.
(Note: The technology of LLM itself is not an environmental disaster, but how it is put in use currently isn't the way).
> yet to prove to be useful
I don’t understand this perspective. It should be abundantly clear at this point that these systems are quite useful for a variety of applications.
Do they have problems? Sure. Do the AI boosters who breathlessly claim that the models are super intelligent make me cringe? Sure.
But saying that they’re not useful is just downright crazy.
> I don’t understand this perspective. It should be abundantly clear at this point that these systems are quite useful for a variety of applications.
LLM are polyvalent. But in most of the tasks they are not the most efficient way to do the task.
Want to play chess ? Use Stockfish or Leela. Want to do image recognition ? SAM or TinyViT like models. Want to know if your are sick ? Go to the doctor or at least do a search on the web.
Yes, there is tasks where LLM are perfect for (speech analysis/classification for example). But omnipotent chatbot isn't one for example.
If there were a revolutionary use, we would have a productivity boom. We don't. This article is from 2021: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/10/1026008/the-comi...
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> It's the global technology that is yet to prove to be useful
Useful for whom, by what definition? I personally find it very useful for my day to day work, whether it be helping me write code, think through ideas, or otherwise.
I don't want to be rude but I don't think that your personal experience is of any interest. The only question is "are LLM relevant ?"
And the only way to assert that they are is to get numbers (big or small) and to compare them to alternatives.
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