4 ms·

Did you experience the popularization of the WWW? There were massive disagreements even among smart tech-savvy people. We even had a stock market boom and just

Did you experience the popularization of the WWW? There were massive disagreements even among smart tech-savvy people. We even had a stock market boom and just cycle associated with it. Funnily, none of that mattered. What mattered is that enough ordinary people on the street found it useful, both for personal and business reasons. Ask yourself: are regular people using this tech, either as producers or consumers? And remember that this is the least powerful that it will ever be.

maxnevermind 1mo ago
> Funnily, none of that mattered. What mattered is that enough ordinary people on the street found it useful, both for personal and business reasons. Broad economic impact due to Internet boom in the the US came from 2 main categories: 1) New huge internet enabled tech companies appeared(Amazon, Google, Meta etc.), all created their own products, all were build on reliable foundational technology. LLMs is not a reliable foundational technology. 2) Existing legacy companies could utilize internet to connect their teams/departments/offices though a bunch of new software which were build on reliable foundational technology. LLMs is not a reliable foundational technology. > And remember that this is the least powerful that it will ever be. This mantra is being repeated but "serious LLMs's issues" I described are still there and will be there because they are part of how LLMs are built and work. Without addressing those you can't build products but LLMs's capability as a personal productivity tool will keep rising, yes. The "best" possible outcome of LLMs to a broader economy might be that a smaller group of experts will be able to do the job in companies due to boost of their personal productivity and a bunch of people will be freed up(laid off) and they will have to go and work on something else and thus a boost of productivity in the economy. But it seems it won't be any low hanging fruits(problems to solve) this time as it was during the internet era. It is not like we out of problems: new cancer treatments, self driving cars, nuclear fusion, modular nuclear reactors etc. There is a huge value to capture there, here is the thing though, those are hard problems, it is not a new TikTok, gmail, netflix etc. Yes, people will have LLMs now but can we actually start solving hard problems with them? Because it might be the case that a gravy train of the last few decades for Silicon Valley is over, no more useless internet enabled services, no more billion dollar companies built on just applying internet to yet another thing and producing another digital product. People's free time is limited, its redistribution across digital services will not grow the economy, global internet penetration is already pretty high and won't grow that much, so there might not be much value to capture there.
entropy47 1mo ago
It's very hard to disagree with the point that it will get more powerful, perhaps in uenxpected ways. I don't know that the average regular person is using this tech as a producer, and while it's hard not to consume it - I don't know if anybody consuming it really wants to. I'm in a bubble of people where we give it a lot more mindshare, but e.g my electrician is aware of the tech, knows what it does, and doesn't really care. I think you're right that if it could manage his books, help him rewire a switchboard, order inventory for him etc that would be very different.
- calgoo 1mo ago
  From what i hear in a small subset of local small businesses is that they are using it for backoffice stuff, like taxes, finding legal codes, organization, planning etc.
- ipsod 1mo ago
  > I don't know if anybody consuming it really wants to. You don't know of people who ask LLMs questions? Or just chat with it for fun and to learn? Maybe your electrician isn't interested. A pharmacist and a nurse I talk to are. Virtually everybody I've talked to uses it to some degree or another. I think it'll soon replace Alexa/Siri for most people, as well as google search. That's pretty far from nobody.
  - HarlequinHair 1mo ago
    I think the first parent post all this conversation originated from, pointed that LLMs are not groundbreaking inventions. If people use it to replace voice assistants or search engines, you can see how this new invention is not really adding anything you already hadn't. AIs in general are very useful, but apart from the campaign they did to change everything's name into AI (also well known algorithms and "old" machine learning), if you look at all the possible applications, LLMs are possibly the least useful of them. Especially if you take into account how much money they spent, and how much effort they put to shove it in your throat. If a technology is convenient for people, you shouldn't need to insist to make people use it. If it is convenient, people will use it in a natural way.
aa-jv 1mo ago
>Did you experience the popularization of the WWW? There were massive disagreements even among smart tech-savvy people. We even had a stock market boom and just cycle associated with it. In the early phase of the Internet envelope, we all wanted to build the real Internet and destroy the AOL's and Compuserves' .. but now the Internet has turned into a mass of AOL's and Compuserves. I think the same thing is happening with the silo'ization of LLM's. People don't want to have to use the "AOL of LLM's" for things - they want to build out their own infrastructure and have a pool of local LLM's (where once it was the company's own modem pool, etc.) It is, oddly enough, parallel with the original arguments in the 70's and 80's regarding supercomputers versus personal computers, or the cloud versus locally managed resources, etc. We are still fighting this battle, just with higher bandwidth. Do we operate a terminal with a fixed window into a bigger computer, or do we operate a heavier local computer with a proper interface?
kakacik 1mo ago
Most people I know, blue and white collar up to and including surgeons and IT folks, use it as better search. My wife is a GP, and all she would ever need is a reliable speech to voice recognition of medical jargon, in french. Not 98%, not almost there, just there. Most people don't live in IT echo chambers like HN. For them, chatgpts are just another online gimmick that saves a bit of time vs googling things, or puts together some paperwork quicker, and thats it. For me, I can see potential beyond but are largely unmoved by it. The price to pay, in fucking up our environment, losing skills and/or losing skills to build skills, making large swaths of population unemployed with no replacement in sight, seems much more like devolution and net loss. Extremely few winners and big bunch of losers. Very happy to be wrong here of course, but only time will tell and neither you nor me know for sure.
- roel_v 1mo ago
  How can it be at the same time "a better search" and also "making large swaths of population unemployed with no replacement in sight" ?
  - stevepotter 1mo ago
    Because it’s so powerful and versatile. The other day my wife took a picture of our living room and chathgpt picked out the perfect rug. That’s both a better search and avoided, say, an interior decorator. In that scenario it’s kinda both.
    - roel_v 1mo ago
      But only a small part of AI applications are that search-like. I mean we could even argue if this is still only search, but that's semantics and boring. But even if we would, there are a lot more applications than pure search. So the GP's original claim that it's just an improved form of something that doesn't put people out of a job, and also puts large amounts of people out of a job, doesn't make sense. Framing tax advise as "yeah it's just a better way to search tax codes" is in the same boat. It's such a massive improvement of both searching and synthesizing that it's a bit weird to call it that. Like saying a 2026 car is just an improvement of a Model T.

maxnevermind 1mo ago

> Funnily, none of that mattered. What mattered is that enough ordinary people on the street found it useful, both for personal and business reasons. Broad economic impact due to Internet boom in the the US came from 2 main categories: 1) New huge internet enabled tech companies appeared(Amazon, Google, Meta etc.), all created their own products, all were build on reliable foundational technology. LLMs is not a reliable foundational technology. 2) Existing legacy companies could utilize internet to connect their teams/departments/offices though a bunch of new software which were build on reliable foundational technology. LLMs is not a reliable foundational technology. > And remember that this is the least powerful that it will ever be. This mantra is being repeated but "serious LLMs's issues" I described are still there and will be there because they are part of how LLMs are built and work. Without addressing those you can't build products but LLMs's capability as a personal productivity tool will keep rising, yes. The "best" possible outcome of LLMs to a broader economy might be that a smaller group of experts will be able to do the job in companies due to boost of their personal productivity and a bunch of people will be freed up(laid off) and they will have to go and work on something else and thus a boost of productivity in the economy. But it seems it won't be any low hanging fruits(problems to solve) this time as it was during the internet era. It is not like we out of problems: new cancer treatments, self driving cars, nuclear fusion, modular nuclear reactors etc. There is a huge value to capture there, here is the thing though, those are hard problems, it is not a new TikTok, gmail, netflix etc. Yes, people will have LLMs now but can we actually start solving hard problems with them? Because it might be the case that a gravy train of the last few decades for Silicon Valley is over, no more useless internet enabled services, no more billion dollar companies built on just applying internet to yet another thing and producing another digital product. People's free time is limited, its redistribution across digital services will not grow the economy, global internet penetration is already pretty high and won't grow that much, so there might not be much value to capture there.

entropy47 1mo ago

It's very hard to disagree with the point that it will get more powerful, perhaps in uenxpected ways. I don't know that the average regular person is using this tech as a producer, and while it's hard not to consume it - I don't know if anybody consuming it really wants to. I'm in a bubble of people where we give it a lot more mindshare, but e.g my electrician is aware of the tech, knows what it does, and doesn't really care. I think you're right that if it could manage his books, help him rewire a switchboard, order inventory for him etc that would be very different.

calgoo 1mo ago
From what i hear in a small subset of local small businesses is that they are using it for backoffice stuff, like taxes, finding legal codes, organization, planning etc.
ipsod 1mo ago
> I don't know if anybody consuming it really wants to. You don't know of people who ask LLMs questions? Or just chat with it for fun and to learn? Maybe your electrician isn't interested. A pharmacist and a nurse I talk to are. Virtually everybody I've talked to uses it to some degree or another. I think it'll soon replace Alexa/Siri for most people, as well as google search. That's pretty far from nobody.
- HarlequinHair 1mo ago
  I think the first parent post all this conversation originated from, pointed that LLMs are not groundbreaking inventions. If people use it to replace voice assistants or search engines, you can see how this new invention is not really adding anything you already hadn't. AIs in general are very useful, but apart from the campaign they did to change everything's name into AI (also well known algorithms and "old" machine learning), if you look at all the possible applications, LLMs are possibly the least useful of them. Especially if you take into account how much money they spent, and how much effort they put to shove it in your throat. If a technology is convenient for people, you shouldn't need to insist to make people use it. If it is convenient, people will use it in a natural way.

aa-jv 1mo ago

>Did you experience the popularization of the WWW? There were massive disagreements even among smart tech-savvy people. We even had a stock market boom and just cycle associated with it. In the early phase of the Internet envelope, we all wanted to build the real Internet and destroy the AOL's and Compuserves' .. but now the Internet has turned into a mass of AOL's and Compuserves. I think the same thing is happening with the silo'ization of LLM's. People don't want to have to use the "AOL of LLM's" for things - they want to build out their own infrastructure and have a pool of local LLM's (where once it was the company's own modem pool, etc.) It is, oddly enough, parallel with the original arguments in the 70's and 80's regarding supercomputers versus personal computers, or the cloud versus locally managed resources, etc. We are still fighting this battle, just with higher bandwidth. Do we operate a terminal with a fixed window into a bigger computer, or do we operate a heavier local computer with a proper interface?

kakacik 1mo ago

Most people I know, blue and white collar up to and including surgeons and IT folks, use it as better search. My wife is a GP, and all she would ever need is a reliable speech to voice recognition of medical jargon, in french. Not 98%, not almost there, just there. Most people don't live in IT echo chambers like HN. For them, chatgpts are just another online gimmick that saves a bit of time vs googling things, or puts together some paperwork quicker, and thats it. For me, I can see potential beyond but are largely unmoved by it. The price to pay, in fucking up our environment, losing skills and/or losing skills to build skills, making large swaths of population unemployed with no replacement in sight, seems much more like devolution and net loss. Extremely few winners and big bunch of losers. Very happy to be wrong here of course, but only time will tell and neither you nor me know for sure.

roel_v 1mo ago
How can it be at the same time "a better search" and also "making large swaths of population unemployed with no replacement in sight" ?
- stevepotter 1mo ago
  Because it’s so powerful and versatile. The other day my wife took a picture of our living room and chathgpt picked out the perfect rug. That’s both a better search and avoided, say, an interior decorator. In that scenario it’s kinda both.
  - roel_v 1mo ago
    But only a small part of AI applications are that search-like. I mean we could even argue if this is still only search, but that's semantics and boring. But even if we would, there are a lot more applications than pure search. So the GP's original claim that it's just an improved form of something that doesn't put people out of a job, and also puts large amounts of people out of a job, doesn't make sense. Framing tax advise as "yeah it's just a better way to search tax codes" is in the same boat. It's such a massive improvement of both searching and synthesizing that it's a bit weird to call it that. Like saying a 2026 car is just an improvement of a Model T.