Your comment, along with cpgxiii and n2d4’s are all really good. I have a question: suppose training and inference of an LLM were made to be deterministic at the cost of performance.

Would the cost be “everything will take twice as long” or would it be more like “inference will take a week and training will take a couple lifetimes”?

If it’s the latter, then it seems disingenuous to call this a “bug.” It’s like saying F1 cars could be horse drawn, and they only use internal combustion for “performance reasons.” If its the former, then maybe there is a more interesting discussion to be had about the potential benefits of determinism? (That said, I agree with n2d4 that it’s stupid to insult the authors. Talk is cheap and building is hard.)