Comment by _heimdall
2 days ago
> The difference I see is that, conversely to websites like pets.com, AI gave the masses something tangible and transformative with the promise it could get even better.
The promise is being offered, that's for sure. The product will never get there, LLMs by design will simply never be intelligent.
They seem to have been banking on the assumption that human intelligence truly is nothing more than predicting the next word based on what was just said/thought. That assumption sounds wrong on the face of it and they seem to be proving it wrong with LLMs.
I agree with you fully.
However, even friends/colleagues that like me are in the AI field (I am more into the "ML" side of things) always mention that while it is true that predicting the next token is a poor approximation of intelligence, emergent behaviors can't be discounted. I don't know enough to have an opinion on that, but for sure it keeps people/companies buying GPUs.
> but for sure it keeps people/companies buying GPUs.
That's a tricky metric to use as an indicator though. Companies, and more importantly their investors, are pouring mountains of cash in the industry based on the hope of what AI may be in the future rather than what it is today. There are multiple incentives that could drive the market for GPUs, only a portion of those have to do with today's LLM outputs.