On the other hand, I think the hype for transformer models is justified. Maybe not ChatGPT or any other specific one, but I think LLMs and transformers will be transformational for our industry, like HTTP was, or portable touchscreen devices.
Just not sure how to measure which one of us is right next year. :)
It feels like this is a category error that is causing you to miss the reason there is so much excitement.
It like saying “I don’t get it, the model T is just another car. We have had them before, and most of them are better than what Ford is selling”. The revolution wasn’t that model T cars were way better than what came before - it was that the way they were built enabled huge new markets.
LLMs seem vastly more powerful than the technology previous chat bots were built on. Plus, there is a whole ecosystem of generative techniques being applied to images, videos, sound, and others.
The exact same arguments you make were said about NFT and blockchain. It would revolutionize finance, it would empower people with decentralized finance, that the art world would be totally revolutionized with digital artifacts. All of it was just vapid hype. Much of the same people making those silly claims are doing the same for AI now...
This is just nonsense, no chatbots before LLM were powerful enough to help me during coding (in any meaningful way); the difference that turns a nerdy pastime into an actual and very useful piece of software.
This doesn’t feel like a coherent argument to me. The statement “There is no “intelligence” in LLMs” does not demonstrate that LLMs are not more powerful than previous chat bots. Same for every other loosely defined subjective word you claimed LLMs are not.
Leave aside the question of whether LLMs do comprehension or whether they are a path to AGI. Just ask if they are a more powerful tool than what came before.
So sure, maybe it's all hype, but the big tech companies with the money are certainly putting their money behind AI in a way they did never did with blockchain.
1/6th of 2021's profits, btw. If they lost all of it they would still be fine.