4 ms·

I think I see. The economies of the internet are changing. Now with LLMs being accessible at an exponentially cheaper rate, we're seeing old models crumble and

I think I see. The economies of the internet are changing. Now with LLMs being accessible at an exponentially cheaper rate, we're seeing old models crumble and new models rising. The era of moderated user content is changing drastically and the stalwarts of social networking, or adjacent, services are closing ranks to try and anticipate the change. Thanks for the insight. I had a vague notion that these new policies were because of some recession or some other basic economic issue. I think a better theory is that the lowering economic cost of LLMs that are becoming available are the reason for all these changes.

karim79 3y ago
Absolutely, and very well put. The costs are pretty close to zero at this point for something that would have been mostly considered, publicly at least, as science fiction just a year ago. It's what the printing press was to the scribe, only way, way more disruptive. I don't know if I'm correct here, but that is what it looks like right now and we're basically still at year zero. I mean, it even got the Google all riled up. The company which basically equates to "The Internet" is having to react, I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've seen such a thing in my life. It goes way beyond their reaction to the iPhone, way beyond the threat of MS exercising their monopoly(ish) power back in the day to try to mitigate the Google threat. History repeats itself albeit in a fascinating way which I'm still trying to grasp. I don't blame SO. I think they are acting rationally and as anyone would facing such a threat. Secretly, I want the internet ad economy of nothing to go away. I won't mention any names (cough taboola cough cough) but that might be the only upside to this tech. Let's see what happens six months or so from now. Side note, I'm running llama on a really crappy old server and that was enough to convince me that I'll be able to run an LLM on my watch in the near future.

karim79 3y ago

Absolutely, and very well put. The costs are pretty close to zero at this point for something that would have been mostly considered, publicly at least, as science fiction just a year ago. It's what the printing press was to the scribe, only way, way more disruptive. I don't know if I'm correct here, but that is what it looks like right now and we're basically still at year zero. I mean, it even got the Google all riled up. The company which basically equates to "The Internet" is having to react, I'm pretty sure that's the first time I've seen such a thing in my life. It goes way beyond their reaction to the iPhone, way beyond the threat of MS exercising their monopoly(ish) power back in the day to try to mitigate the Google threat. History repeats itself albeit in a fascinating way which I'm still trying to grasp. I don't blame SO. I think they are acting rationally and as anyone would facing such a threat. Secretly, I want the internet ad economy of nothing to go away. I won't mention any names (cough taboola cough cough) but that might be the only upside to this tech. Let's see what happens six months or so from now. Side note, I'm running llama on a really crappy old server and that was enough to convince me that I'll be able to run an LLM on my watch in the near future.