4 ms·
I wish people would stop making predictions about LLMs so confidently. Some people confidently predict that LLMs will never be able to replace capable engineers
by InsideOutSanta 2y ago
I wish people would stop making predictions about LLMs so confidently. Some people confidently predict that LLMs will never be able to replace capable engineers, and other people equally confidently predict that we'll all be out of a job in five years.
The reality is that we don't know.
We don't know what the ceiling is for LLM programming ability. We don't know how much better they can get without scaling up the hardware. We don't know how well we'll be able to scale up the hardware. We don't know how many more billions we'll allow companies to spend building better and better models until the market loses confidence in them.
We can make educated guesses, but that's all they are. We just don't know.
- devnull3 2y agoTo be fair, if we know something will happen with high certainty then its not much of a prediction. The fact that no one really knows how LLMS will pan-out means every projection in future is a prediction.
- mihaic 2y agoI echo the parent comment. It's not the fact that predictions are made, it's the fact that no certainty interval is ever given, and everything is pronounced with complete confidence.
- walterbell 2y agos/making predictions/talking their book/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18146703
- 0xEF 2y agoCorrect. But... We _do know_ that companies are typically driven by greed and profit, so if it is possible for them to replace their human workers with something that does a similar level of work but also does not require a paycheck, we would be absolute fools to assume that they won't do everything in their power to make that a reality, regardless of the understood reliability of LLMs.
- immibis 2y agoWe also know that incompetent management is widespread, so many companies would replace their humans workers with LLMs even if it is not possible, and we know many investors are also incompetent, so these companies might even be allowed to continue to exist and might even grow really big.
- franktankbank 2y agoUnless its too expensive or just doesn't work well. Although in entrenched fields like healthcare that act with impunity I guess an LLM would make a slightly cheaper firewall between the industry and the customers you "serve".
- ofrzeta 2y agoWe don't know but we can see that progress has staggered a bit. This also correlates with how we think LLMs work (even their operators don't seem to understand 100%). So my bet would be that we'd rather reach the ceiling.