The market, meant in a general sense, is stronger than any individual or groups of people. LLMs are here, and already demonstrate enough productive value to make them in high demand for objective reasons (vs. just as a speculation vehicle). They're not going away, nor is larger GenAI. It would take a collapse of technological civilization to turn the tide back now.
Or much more elaborately, but also exhaustively and to the point: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.
In the same way once a certain threshold is reached in the utility of AI (in a similar vein to the "once I saw the Internet for the first time I knew I would just keep using it") it becomes "inevitable"; it becomes a cheaper option than "the way we've always done it", a better option, or some combination of the two.
So, as is very common in technological innovation / revolution, the question isn't will it change the way things are done so much as where will it shift the cost curve? How deeply will it displace "the way we've always done it"? How many hand weaved shirts do you own? Joseph-Marie Jacquard wants to know (and King Cnut has metaphorical clogs to sell to the Luddites).
This isn't about fatalism or even pessimism. The tide coming in isn't good or bad. It's more like the refrain from Game of Thrones: Winter is coming. You prepare for it. Your time might be better served finding shelter and warm clothing rather than engaging in a futile attempt to prevent it.
edit As an aside, you might want to read Don Quixote [1]
How come there even is anything left to solve for LLMs?
It’s just really not comparable.
> When he was at the height of his ascendancy, he ordered his chair to be placed on the sea-shore as the tide was coming in. Then he said to the rising tide, "You are subject to me, as the land on which I am sitting is mine, and no one has resisted my overlordship with impunity. I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master." But the sea came up as usual, and disrespectfully drenched the king's feet and shins. So jumping back, the king cried, "Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws."
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the...
So in that sense we agree. Let's be like he Dutch. Let's realize the coming tide and build defenses against it.
Can you stop it?
Did luddites ever have a chance of stopping the industrial revolution?
It's easy to say what was inevitable when you are looking into the past. Much harder to predict what inevitable future awaits us.
You can simply spend so much time on meticulously documenting that "AI" (unfortunately!) does not work that it will be quietly abandoned.
But even if, that presupposes a kind of unity of opinion, committing the exact same sin the article we're discussing is complaining about. Many engineers believe that AI does, in fact, work, and will keep getting better - and will work towards the future you'd like to work against.
A Guatemalan or Indian can write code for my boss today...instead of me. Software engineers despite the cliff in employment and the like are still rather well paid and there's plenty of room to undercut and for people to disregard principles. If this is perceived to be an issue to them at all. If you talk to many irl... Well it is not in the slightest.
It's fair enough to say "you can change the future", but sometimes you can't. You don't have the resources, and often, the will.
The internet was the future, we saw it, some didn't. Cryptocurrencies are the future, some see it, some don't. And using AI is the future too.
Are LLMs the endpoint? Obviously not. But they'll keep getting better, marginally, until there's a breakthrough, or a change, and they'll advance further.
But they won't be going away.
Even if you don't think you can change something, you shouldn't be sure about that. If you care about the outcome, you try things also against the odds and also try to organize such efforts with others.
(I'm puzzled by poeple who don't see it that way but at the same time don't find VC and start-ups insanely weird...).
