Comment by aswegs8
2 days ago
There is actually an interesting scenario in this disconnect that we are experiencing. Maybe "real" AGI in the sense of intelligence that self-corrects effectively like a human is still a long way. Maybe we will be stuck with this kind of ever-improving but still kind of deficient LLM intelligence we have right now.
There are tons of use cases even for such a limited type of intelligence. No, it is not a million math PhDs at your disposal. It is a narrow intelligence that is still hugely useful and businesses will need a few years to adapt. The impact on topics like customer service with LLM+RAG+triggering actions is very close already and should transform the industry in the next years.
Yes - LLMs are useful, even if auto-regressively trained GPTs aren't the answer to human intelligence, and outside of software development (maybe there too) it seems we're still very early in companies trying to figure out what they can and can not usefully be used for.
It seems the LLM companies generating all the hype (mostly OpenAI & Anthropic) may be shooting themselves in the foot a bit here, raising false expectations of what LLMs can do, or soon will be able to do, and therefore encouraging all the misapplication and failed corporate projects that are currently happening. Anthropic are talkiing out of both sides of their mouth here, saying that AGI is imminent, about to replace developers and remote workers, yet acknowledging that the technology and use case selection is so fickle that corporations aren't likely to be successful without 1-on-1 guidance from Anthropic.
The mythical AGI, an artificial human, will presumably be transformative if/when it ever arrives, but even if we're still early days in LLM adoption it's not clear if that (LLMs) really will be. Developers get a new tool to use, consumers get a new frustrating AI customer service to deal with, corporate e-mails, marketing literature and powerpoints become enshittified LLM-generated AI slop, etc. Maybe the biggest "transformative" (widely felt) impact of LLMs is potentially chatbots and AI-search, but it seems people are just taking that in their stride, and not obvious that the experience and impact from that is going to change much going forwards.