Comment by SamuelAdams
5 hours ago
Calculators are widely available for a low cost. The logic behind most calculators is able to be consistently duplicated across a variety of manufacturers, thereby lowering the cost to produce these to the masses.
LLM’s are not consistent. For example, having a new company make a functional duplicate of ChatGPT is nearly impossible.
Furthermore, the cost of LLM’s can change at any time for any reason. Access can be changed by new government regulations, and private organizations can chose to suspend or revoke access to their LLM due to changes in local laws.
All of this makes dependence on an LLM a risk for any professionals. The only way these would be mitigated is by an open source, freely available LLM that creates consistent results that students can learn how to use.
My intuition is that the costs involved to train and run LLMs will keep dropping. They will become more and more accessible, so long as our economies keep chugging along.
I could be wrong, time will tell. I just wouldn't base my argument for why students should learn to think for themselves on accessibility of LLMs. I think there's something far more fundamental and important, I just don't know how to say it yet.