Comment by throwaway13337
3 days ago
That's right. And don't forget that the chips it runs on are manufactured by companies I might not agree with. Nor the mining companies that got the metal. Nor the energy company that powers it.
The wonderful thing about markets that work is that you can swap things out without being under their boot.
I worry about a LLM duopology. But as long as open weight models are nipping at their heels, it is the consumer that stands to benefit.
The train we're on means a lot of tech companies will feel a creative destruction sort of pain. They might want to stop it but are forced by the market to participate.
Remember that Google sat on their AI tech before being forced to productize it by OpenAI.
In a working market, companies are forced to give consumers what they want.
> And don't forget that the chips it runs on are manufactured by companies I might not agree with. Nor the mining companies that got the metal. Nor the energy company that powers it.
You see that this is a non sequitur right? No matter who makes the chips or mines the metal or supplies the power, the behavior of the thing won't be affected. That isn't the case when we're talking about who's training the LLM that's running your shit.
It's a good thing that there are so many LLM choices out there, then.
Maybe the fundamental disagreement is whether LLMs will be a commodity product or not.
I think they will be since there hasn't been an indicator that secret sauce lasts more than a few months. The open weight models are, at most, a year behind.
We're in a different environment. The last tech rules of e.g. network effect cannot be directly applied.
What do you think a GPU is? A chip manufacturer absolutely has the ability to add their own bias in firmware and drivers.
Care to explain how chip makers can influence the inference outcome of LLMs?
>Remember that Google sat on their AI tech before being forced to productize it by OpenAI.
Google knew this tech wasn't ready for prime-time, they already had plenty of revenue and didn't need to release shoddy shit, but were forced to roll out "AI" even with "hallucinations" and the resulting liabilities to keep up with the new hotness. The tech is still so shoddy, I can't believe people use it for anything beyond a curiosity.
> The wonderful thing about markets that work is that you can swap things out without being under their boot.
This is an illusion. You literally describe Zizek's "Desert of the real": Billionaires own the illusion and you are telling me I get to pick from a selection of choices carefully curated and presented to me.
> In a working market, companies are forced to give consumers what they want.
I want personal nuclear weapons, so the market hasn't been working for me. Time to roll back those pesky laws, regulations, and ethical boundaries. Prosecute executives who won't give me what I want.
Cmon man. “Consumers” in aggregate. Not “every consumer”. But you knew that.
Many consumers want things that are arguably harmful for everyone involved. Users asking Grok to generate a large amount of CSAM from kid pics on Twitter is but one example.
2 replies →