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Would you say the same about any other tool, like where is the revenue caused by Susan in accounting having a computer, shouldn't we take away her computer if s
by pocksuppet 4mo ago
Would you say the same about any other tool, like where is the revenue caused by Susan in accounting having a computer, shouldn't we take away her computer if she can't prove a benefit?
- amazingamazing 4mo agoThe benefit of a computer would be trivial to demonstrate.
- _aavaa_ 4mo agoTrivial now. It was not always the case: http://digamo.free.fr/david90.pdf http://digamo.free.fr/david90.pdf
- gamblor956 4mo agoThe benefits of computers were obvious before they went into production. After 1T in spend, it's still not clear that AIs will beat out a $30k secretary. Also, your link has nothing to do with computers.
- _aavaa_ 4mo agoThe benefits of having a computer that we can now interact with in plain natural language, that can extract intent from vague questions/statements, and that can piece together answers is obvious. The link talks directly about the disconnect between the supposed productivity benefits of a technology and the measured productivity benefits of it in practice. And provides historical context about why the “obvious” benefits of a computer did not materialize when it was introduced; business and their processes had to be rebuilt around the computer before real gains were seen.
- gamblor956 4mo agoBut LLMs can't actually do that any better than a 30k secretary with no training. It's a structural deficiency in the way they work that can't just be handwaived away.
- _aavaa_ 4mo agoNobody is talking about hand waving. Look at progress in models between the original ChatGPT release and what came out this year. The progress is incredible, both in the frontier models and in the smaller ones that can be run in high end laptops (<100GB of ram). There are new architectures, paper, and harnesses coming out weekly that improve performance, accuracy, and/or performance efficiency. Whether they can do better or not than a secretary is a poorly defined metric. But by objective metric they are already producing less buggy code than $30k developers, and doing it faster.
- gamblor956 4mo agoOnly if by "incredible" you mean it takes vastly more resources to do the same thing slightly better but with an even larger chance of completely fouling the bed. But by objective metric they are already producing less buggy code than $30k developers, and doing it faster. That's like bragging that a $1 trillion tank can go faster than a cheap budget car. For $1 trillion being slightly better isn't good enough.
- _aavaa_ 4mo agoFirst off, the state of the art models are perusing a strategy of doing more with more, but there are lots of small models that can be run locally on high end pcs. Those small models are more capable, are cheaper, and are faster than the state of the art of 3 years ago. If you consider the change in what’s possible in June 2026 vs 2025 (to say nothing of 2024) “incremental” than you and I are living in different realities and I don’t know what to tell you.
- pocksuppet 4mo agoNeither can an accounting computer.