Comment by vessenes
2 days ago
I hear that. Counterpoint - if you all you have is a Philips-head screwdriver, all you have is a Philips-head screwdriver. On the other hand if all you have is a six axis CnC mill, well, then you have a lot.
I think of this less as audit misses, and more as developing a permanently useful tool. For open model weights, humanity will not (unless we’re talking real zombie apocalypse scenarios) lose these weights. They are an incredible global asset, so making them more generally useful and figuring out how to use them is super helpful.
Maybe they are useful. But I think there’s more usefulness in specialized databases and optimized approaches than betting everything on big llms models. Kinda like deriving linting rules and combining it with a rule engines to catch errors. Efficient and useful instead of continuously running a big llm model.
While it is hard to argue with the wisdom of crystallizing intellectual capital into our tools, I do wonder if these models might be as likely to diminish as to develop the person using them, in which case we trade an implement's iterative improvement for ours, in a way
Monks in the Middle Ages: “The Printing Press will destroy people’s ability to memorize.”
This was accurate. But mostly humans gained from books. I think we will develop the social technology to use these tools over time; giving some things up and gaining others.
If we don’t, the Amish can just take over and be like “Stupid English, using the devil’s weights.” :)