3 ms·

For many coders including myself, LLM based coding agents work well enough to be useful, and in some cases worth paying for. What I don't see is vast areas of

by Zigurd 2mo ago

For many coders including myself, LLM based coding agents work well enough to be useful, and in some cases worth paying for. What I don't see is vast areas of industry finding $10s to $100s of billions of value in LLMs. There's no lint or compiler that can check for correctly constructed contracts. So LLMs, which should be useful to law firms, incur a lot more manual checking of their work than coding agents. Less formal document production in other industries is likely to have less structure. That might not matter in some settings but I'm having trouble thinking of an example off the top of my head.

_joel 2mo ago
> There's no lint or compiler that can check for correctly constructed contracts. There are definitely linters and this exists https://catala-lang.org/ https://catala-lang.org/
carlosjobim 2mo ago
> What I don't see is vast areas of industry finding $10s to $100s of billions of value in LLMs. Translation between languages. That value dwarfs all programming value that can be had. Economically, culturally, scientifically, spiritually.
- eikenberry 2mo ago
  But translations don't require anything close to SOTA level models. Translations will be high volume, low margin transactions. That will not save Anthropic.
  - carlosjobim 2mo ago
    Maybe not Anthropic, but LLM translations has a value counted in the trillions of dollars easily.
    - tock 2mo ago
      I see it's important but trillions? How did you quantify that number?
      - carlosjobim 2mo ago
        Tourism and travel is 10% of global GDP, or about 10 trillion dollars. And it's not the only sector where translation between languages is a benefit. However, I am not sure that the trillions of dollars of value from LLM translation in the coming few years will translate into trillions of dollars of income for the AI companies.
        tock 2mo ago
        Yep translation is going to be a free feature on all devices using on-device LLMs. I see no revenue flowing to AI companies.
        carlosjobim 2mo ago
        Commercial grade translation between dozens of languages would take enormous amounts of disk space. But we'll see. Text editing tools are included on all digital devices, yet companies pay for commercial solutions like MS Office. Cameras and basic image editing tools are included on all smart phones, yet there are millions of advertising agencies around the world. And so on.
        tock 2mo ago
        LLM frontier companies are more akin to infrastructure like chips and airplanes and the internet than applications built on top of it. There will be products built on top of them that generate revenue. eg. processors are needed for everything on the planet. No Intel isn't going to generate annual revenue in the trillions because of that. In the case of frontier companies the moat is even smaller with dozens of players competing. LLMs will become a low-cost commodity. You meanwhile can make billions building applications using them though.
- nitwit005 2mo ago
  Between human languages? The problem will be Google is giving that away for free.
  - carlosjobim 2mo ago
    The quality of Google Translate is so low that it isn't even in the picture.
  - theshrike79 2mo ago
    You can do that with single words or phrases. Now do a full movie's subtitles with google translate, in an automated fashion. So that it understands the context and still translates it correctly.
- bluegatty 2mo ago
  Social issues aside, that's a tiny slice of the economics of AI. Just by nature of how often it's used etc. You need workloads for AI be cost effective: software, automation etc.
  - carlosjobim 2mo ago
    International trade is a giant sector already, and potentially much bigger than that, now that LLM assisted translation makes it easy to offer your products and services in any language, or make complicated and sensitive deals without a common language. Hackers always rage and down vote every time I mention this, because they are unable to see beyond their small world. Why didn't they learn that their part of the internet is 0,000000001% of what the world uses the internet for today. It's going to be the same with LLMs. Programming and hacker stuff is going to be 0,0000000000000000000000000000001% of what the world uses AI for. But translation is going to be in the top 5 of use cases.
    - fullshark 2mo ago
      I think OP's comment is about volume/scale more so than practical application.
    - thinking_cactus 2mo ago
      I think quite cheap models will probably work with translation (I think for many use cases Google's now fairly old tech works well enough and is free?). The main problem is I think you're assuming because the current translation market is large (I'm just going to assume it's ~100B in size just from a cursory search), then it will remain large with LLMs. If LLMs are much cheaper than humans, even with a lot of growth in translation volume the total spend may not compensate for it (again most of the volume will probably be using almost free models?). Another is assuming that because something is valuable you can charge a lot for it. Like, oxygen from air is extremely valuable to us. If oxygen somehow depleted we would die almost instantly. It does not mean everyone goes around purchasing oxygen or even less that you can charge absurd amounts for it.
      - 2mo ago
- nisiddharth 2mo ago
  A model bundled in your phone can do the translation, you're thinking too much of it.
  - carlosjobim 2mo ago
    A model bundled in your phone cannot do commercial grade quality of translations.
ray_kay777 2mo ago
While there's no linter for writing contracts, my experience (as a commercial lawyer) is that frontier LLMs are far better and error checking and far quicker at writing than the average senior lawyer. The main thing holding back further deployment (in my jurisdiction) are concerns around data residency, privilege and how fundamentally it will break an industry that is so heavily reliant on time based billing.
- nprateem 2mo ago
  Trouble is they're unreliable. I compared insurance quotes last week. Needed cover for 2 brands, 1 company. Opus jumps up and down saying both brands need listing on the policy schedule. Human broker said not. I told opus and it's the usual "thanks you're right" bollocks because it bothered to read in more detail and found that all business activities are covered.
- Zizizizz 2mo ago
  I agree with you in respect to the greatest risks in that industry. Just thought it's worth mentioning that LLM's unsurprisingly are not immune to hallucinating cases. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-lawyers-keep-citing-fake-cases-invented-by-ai/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-lawyers-keep-... Using them for coding makes it easy to self check its work (assuming those pieces of work are "verifiable"). As proofreading will still need to happen, what do you think the appetite for lawyers is to do this kind of work? Do you think it will drive fees down significantly? Empower younger lawyers at firms who probably are the ones doing this checking for the partners? (Or will that just create a further divide). I'm genuinely asking as I am not in law but all my family is and it's nice to see someone here that's thought about the impacts in that space.
  - ray_kay777 2mo ago
    With access to good databases and tool use, hallucinations are basically a thing of the past (and very easy to verify). The hallucination issue typically comes from people using free ChatGPT or similar - tech usage and literacy is often poor and there's a lack of understanding of the risks of using something without proper legal database tools. Most lawyers would not have the faintest idea of what tool use in the context of an LLM even means. It's still seen as a magic box rather than a tool for real work. Will it drive down fees significantly? Doubt it, there's not enough pressure on them, and the industry is resistant to change. Firms don't want to make a big deal about using it because clients will then ask why they're not getting a discount. Will it empower younger lawyers? Not as much as I'd like. I'm very fortunate to have an employer that lets me use Claude Code for my work (to a limited extent). I think for 99.9% of lawyers it's not an option available to them, through a mix of concerns around AI usage and concerned IT departments. There could be great benefits, but it would rely on having to break out of traditional private practice which would make it difficult to get enough work. I think in the near term LLMs will have much the same impact on the legal industry as it has on the software industry.
hirvi74 2mo ago
I have a family member that is an attorney in housing law. She claimed that LLMs are not particularly useful for her work. If she asked a simple question like, "Find all the <insert specific housing laws> for all 50 states," then she still has to go and check every single one of the laws. Since the legislature is modified so often, she cannot look at, say, Maryland's law and know if it the LLM output was the 1990, 2014, 2018, or 2026 version of the codified law. In order to fact check the law, she has to look it up, and by that point in time, she has the answer she did the work of the LLM.
- ipaddr 2mo ago
  This is my experience if you need the data to be accurate often it isn't and you only know that because you had to check because it was important. Things not important you never check.
- nottorp 2mo ago
  You can reproduce these results even if you're not a lawyer, if you've dabbled in any MMO that has been around for a few years and had multiple patches. Ask any LLM about a random game mechanic and then be prepared to verify if the answer is for the patch in 2025, 2023 or 2020...
- nrmitchi 2mo ago
  This doesn’t sound as much that “LLMs can’t help me” as much as “trying to one-shot a complicated answer in a chatbot can’t help me”. Output straight from a generative model definitely should not be trusted. But that doesn’t mean that an appropriate harness (even Claude code and a dynamic workflow) can’t complete, and validate, an answer.
  - suddenlybananas 2mo ago
    Seems like it would be a massive market to make such a harness, and yet you're making it sound very easy to do. It would be surprising no one has done it if it were.
    - 2mo ago

by Zigurd 2mo ago

_joel 2mo ago

> There's no lint or compiler that can check for correctly constructed contracts. There are definitely linters and this exists https://catala-lang.org/ https://catala-lang.org/

carlosjobim 2mo ago

> What I don't see is vast areas of industry finding $10s to $100s of billions of value in LLMs. Translation between languages. That value dwarfs all programming value that can be had. Economically, culturally, scientifically, spiritually.

eikenberry 2mo ago
But translations don't require anything close to SOTA level models. Translations will be high volume, low margin transactions. That will not save Anthropic.
- carlosjobim 2mo ago
  Maybe not Anthropic, but LLM translations has a value counted in the trillions of dollars easily.
  - tock 2mo ago
    I see it's important but trillions? How did you quantify that number?
    - carlosjobim 2mo ago
      Tourism and travel is 10% of global GDP, or about 10 trillion dollars. And it's not the only sector where translation between languages is a benefit. However, I am not sure that the trillions of dollars of value from LLM translation in the coming few years will translate into trillions of dollars of income for the AI companies.
      - tock 2mo ago
        Yep translation is going to be a free feature on all devices using on-device LLMs. I see no revenue flowing to AI companies.
        carlosjobim 2mo ago
        Commercial grade translation between dozens of languages would take enormous amounts of disk space. But we'll see. Text editing tools are included on all digital devices, yet companies pay for commercial solutions like MS Office. Cameras and basic image editing tools are included on all smart phones, yet there are millions of advertising agencies around the world. And so on.
        tock 2mo ago
        LLM frontier companies are more akin to infrastructure like chips and airplanes and the internet than applications built on top of it. There will be products built on top of them that generate revenue. eg. processors are needed for everything on the planet. No Intel isn't going to generate annual revenue in the trillions because of that. In the case of frontier companies the moat is even smaller with dozens of players competing. LLMs will become a low-cost commodity. You meanwhile can make billions building applications using them though.
nitwit005 2mo ago
Between human languages? The problem will be Google is giving that away for free.
- carlosjobim 2mo ago
  The quality of Google Translate is so low that it isn't even in the picture.
- theshrike79 2mo ago
  You can do that with single words or phrases. Now do a full movie's subtitles with google translate, in an automated fashion. So that it understands the context and still translates it correctly.
bluegatty 2mo ago
Social issues aside, that's a tiny slice of the economics of AI. Just by nature of how often it's used etc. You need workloads for AI be cost effective: software, automation etc.
- carlosjobim 2mo ago
  International trade is a giant sector already, and potentially much bigger than that, now that LLM assisted translation makes it easy to offer your products and services in any language, or make complicated and sensitive deals without a common language. Hackers always rage and down vote every time I mention this, because they are unable to see beyond their small world. Why didn't they learn that their part of the internet is 0,000000001% of what the world uses the internet for today. It's going to be the same with LLMs. Programming and hacker stuff is going to be 0,0000000000000000000000000000001% of what the world uses AI for. But translation is going to be in the top 5 of use cases.
  - fullshark 2mo ago
    I think OP's comment is about volume/scale more so than practical application.
  - thinking_cactus 2mo ago
    I think quite cheap models will probably work with translation (I think for many use cases Google's now fairly old tech works well enough and is free?). The main problem is I think you're assuming because the current translation market is large (I'm just going to assume it's ~100B in size just from a cursory search), then it will remain large with LLMs. If LLMs are much cheaper than humans, even with a lot of growth in translation volume the total spend may not compensate for it (again most of the volume will probably be using almost free models?). Another is assuming that because something is valuable you can charge a lot for it. Like, oxygen from air is extremely valuable to us. If oxygen somehow depleted we would die almost instantly. It does not mean everyone goes around purchasing oxygen or even less that you can charge absurd amounts for it.
    - 2mo ago
nisiddharth 2mo ago
A model bundled in your phone can do the translation, you're thinking too much of it.
- carlosjobim 2mo ago
  A model bundled in your phone cannot do commercial grade quality of translations.

ray_kay777 2mo ago

While there's no linter for writing contracts, my experience (as a commercial lawyer) is that frontier LLMs are far better and error checking and far quicker at writing than the average senior lawyer. The main thing holding back further deployment (in my jurisdiction) are concerns around data residency, privilege and how fundamentally it will break an industry that is so heavily reliant on time based billing.

nprateem 2mo ago
Trouble is they're unreliable. I compared insurance quotes last week. Needed cover for 2 brands, 1 company. Opus jumps up and down saying both brands need listing on the policy schedule. Human broker said not. I told opus and it's the usual "thanks you're right" bollocks because it bothered to read in more detail and found that all business activities are covered.
Zizizizz 2mo ago
I agree with you in respect to the greatest risks in that industry. Just thought it's worth mentioning that LLM's unsurprisingly are not immune to hallucinating cases. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-lawyers-keep-citing-fake-cases-invented-by-ai/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-lawyers-keep-... Using them for coding makes it easy to self check its work (assuming those pieces of work are "verifiable"). As proofreading will still need to happen, what do you think the appetite for lawyers is to do this kind of work? Do you think it will drive fees down significantly? Empower younger lawyers at firms who probably are the ones doing this checking for the partners? (Or will that just create a further divide). I'm genuinely asking as I am not in law but all my family is and it's nice to see someone here that's thought about the impacts in that space.
- ray_kay777 2mo ago
  With access to good databases and tool use, hallucinations are basically a thing of the past (and very easy to verify). The hallucination issue typically comes from people using free ChatGPT or similar - tech usage and literacy is often poor and there's a lack of understanding of the risks of using something without proper legal database tools. Most lawyers would not have the faintest idea of what tool use in the context of an LLM even means. It's still seen as a magic box rather than a tool for real work. Will it drive down fees significantly? Doubt it, there's not enough pressure on them, and the industry is resistant to change. Firms don't want to make a big deal about using it because clients will then ask why they're not getting a discount. Will it empower younger lawyers? Not as much as I'd like. I'm very fortunate to have an employer that lets me use Claude Code for my work (to a limited extent). I think for 99.9% of lawyers it's not an option available to them, through a mix of concerns around AI usage and concerned IT departments. There could be great benefits, but it would rely on having to break out of traditional private practice which would make it difficult to get enough work. I think in the near term LLMs will have much the same impact on the legal industry as it has on the software industry.

hirvi74 2mo ago

I have a family member that is an attorney in housing law. She claimed that LLMs are not particularly useful for her work. If she asked a simple question like, "Find all the <insert specific housing laws> for all 50 states," then she still has to go and check every single one of the laws. Since the legislature is modified so often, she cannot look at, say, Maryland's law and know if it the LLM output was the 1990, 2014, 2018, or 2026 version of the codified law. In order to fact check the law, she has to look it up, and by that point in time, she has the answer she did the work of the LLM.

ipaddr 2mo ago
This is my experience if you need the data to be accurate often it isn't and you only know that because you had to check because it was important. Things not important you never check.
nottorp 2mo ago
You can reproduce these results even if you're not a lawyer, if you've dabbled in any MMO that has been around for a few years and had multiple patches. Ask any LLM about a random game mechanic and then be prepared to verify if the answer is for the patch in 2025, 2023 or 2020...
nrmitchi 2mo ago
This doesn’t sound as much that “LLMs can’t help me” as much as “trying to one-shot a complicated answer in a chatbot can’t help me”. Output straight from a generative model definitely should not be trusted. But that doesn’t mean that an appropriate harness (even Claude code and a dynamic workflow) can’t complete, and validate, an answer.
- suddenlybananas 2mo ago
  Seems like it would be a massive market to make such a harness, and yet you're making it sound very easy to do. It would be surprising no one has done it if it were.
  - 2mo ago