2 ms·

As I wrote only yesterday, "the usual critics will point out that LLMs like GPT-4o still have a lot of failure modes and suffer from issues that remain unresolv

by cs702 2y ago

As I wrote only yesterday, "the usual critics will point out that LLMs like GPT-4o still have a lot of failure modes and suffer from issues that remain unresolved. They will point out that we're reaping diminishing returns from Transformers. They will question the absence of a "GPT-5" model. And so on..."[a] Gary Marcus is one of those critics. He's always ready to "explain" why a new model is not yet intelligent. In the OP, he repeats the usual criticisms, making him sound, ahem, like a stochastic parrot. He largely ignores all the work that has gone into making GPT4-o behave and sound in ways that feel more natural, more human. My suggestion is to watch the demos of GPT4-o, play with it, and reach your own conclusions. To me, it feels magical. It makes the AIs of many movies look like they are no longer in the realm of science fiction but in the realm of incremental product development. --- [a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40346080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40346080

infecto 2y ago
It is interesting to me how quickly people jump on the negative bandwagon. "companies are wasting money", "there is no value in LLM", "peak llm"....the list goes on. There is a lot of value to these models and the timeline they are improving is impressive.
- cs702 2y ago
  I think the benefits to society are going to be significant, but I suspect that most companies in the space will not recoup their investment. They're losing money or at best breaking even on each token. It's as if the return on their investments is accruing diffusely to the public instead of to them.
  - infecto 2y ago
    Depends on what space you are talking about. Do you mean the group building models, running the compute, or paying to use the models? I don't know how the economics will work out for companies like openai who are building the models, its unclear yet. On the consumer side, there will be winners and losers like always. Companies are seeing real value by using LLMs. I think its still in its infancy so a lot of net losers as people figure out what works and does not work but these new tools are creating value and doing it in such a way that I think warrants investment from companies.
    - cs702 2y ago
      > Depends on what space you are talking about. The companies constantly building and training new models to keep up with the competition.
cess11 2y ago
I saw two clips, which I think was such demonstrations. Both reeked of desperation, one was a dude talking with a synthesised voice imitating a young, overly pleasing woman, the other used the same voice for a pretty weird trivial translation between english and italian. Machine translation is quite old by now, and for practical uses you'd want speech to translated text so it doesn't interrupt conversation like in the demonstration. Sure, I can imagine people with a lot of spare time and few or no friends might want to substitute with a machine, and that they might feel that this has a magic to it. Magical here meaning roughly the same as it does when applied to Disney-land or similar entertainment simulacra.

by cs702 2y ago

infecto 2y ago

It is interesting to me how quickly people jump on the negative bandwagon. "companies are wasting money", "there is no value in LLM", "peak llm"....the list goes on. There is a lot of value to these models and the timeline they are improving is impressive.

cs702 2y ago
I think the benefits to society are going to be significant, but I suspect that most companies in the space will not recoup their investment. They're losing money or at best breaking even on each token. It's as if the return on their investments is accruing diffusely to the public instead of to them.
- infecto 2y ago
  Depends on what space you are talking about. Do you mean the group building models, running the compute, or paying to use the models? I don't know how the economics will work out for companies like openai who are building the models, its unclear yet. On the consumer side, there will be winners and losers like always. Companies are seeing real value by using LLMs. I think its still in its infancy so a lot of net losers as people figure out what works and does not work but these new tools are creating value and doing it in such a way that I think warrants investment from companies.
  - cs702 2y ago
    > Depends on what space you are talking about. The companies constantly building and training new models to keep up with the competition.

cess11 2y ago

I saw two clips, which I think was such demonstrations. Both reeked of desperation, one was a dude talking with a synthesised voice imitating a young, overly pleasing woman, the other used the same voice for a pretty weird trivial translation between english and italian. Machine translation is quite old by now, and for practical uses you'd want speech to translated text so it doesn't interrupt conversation like in the demonstration. Sure, I can imagine people with a lot of spare time and few or no friends might want to substitute with a machine, and that they might feel that this has a magic to it. Magical here meaning roughly the same as it does when applied to Disney-land or similar entertainment simulacra.