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Comment by onion2k | Hacker News Reader

We've had LLMs for about 5 years so far in non-academic research. If we're talking 10 years out that means we're looking at tech that's about 1/3 through its development to date.

Take any mature-ish technology that you use today and compare the version 1/3 through its life to the version you use now. Look at Chrome 20 compare to Chrome 111, or React 14 compared to React 18, or an iPhone 4 compared to an iPhone 14, or a car from 1950 compared to a car today...

The difference is always quite significant. Superficially they're still the same thing, but if you look at the detail everything is just better. AI will be the same.

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You can't extrapolate from an arbitrary selection of technologies and assume that LLMs will have the same trajectory. They could be like the iPhone, or they could be like self-driving cars which have been a year away from replacing all drivers for 10 years now.

Self driving cars a few years ago seem particular close in hype level and apprehension to LLM today but progress on those has not matched expectations at all. What if GPT4 is the last major advance in LLMs for a really long time?

Might just be me, but I think the big difference here is the level of adoption. Everybody with an internet connection can use an LLM. It hits closer to home that way, whereas driving is very dangerous and most people haven't used a self driving car before.

You can't extrapolate from an arbitrary selection of technologies...

I'm not. I'm saying it's true for every technology. Everything gets better with time.

As for self driving cars, compare a DARPA challenge car from 2013 to a Waymo car today. It's massively better.

Eh, the difference is almost entirely in presentation. At the core a car today doesn't do significantly more than a car in 1962.

Superficially they're similar in the "they both have 4 wheels and an engine" sense, but you could examine literally any part of a car today compared to one from the 1950s and find huge improvements. The efficiency, safety, comfort, tech, manufacturing... Everything is better.

I agree with the safety angle, but besides that driving a car from 2023 is not substantially different from the 1950s (in the sense that it opens up a lot of new possibilities).

When I started reading your comment I thought you were going to argue the opposite. Getting my first iPhone (3G) was a huge change. iPhone 4 to the latest are mostly incremental improvements. Aside from the camera, I could probably live with an iPhone 4 without many issues. Only the software is a lot more bloated now.

We still had a Moto X from 2013 that my wife would power on every now and then to test an app that they were developing (iOS household), and besides the camera it still looks like a perfectly usable modern smartphone. When using it, it doesn't feel like a phone from the prehistory.

Where's my fusion powered flying car and electricity too cheap to meter?

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