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Comment by ratmeadow | Hacker News Reader

Pretty arbitrary list, no? You could replace "LLMs" with various technologies that seem important (particularly at the beginning of their existence before their true value is determined). Why not: C, cloud computing, neural networks, Dijkstra's algorithm, WiFi, FFT, etc?

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5 years after Dijkstra’s algorithm was invented, could non-tech people look back and see a huge impact on their everyday lives? No.

Of the things in your list, WiFi is the closest to rising to this level, but even WiFi can’t claim to be as big of a deal as the Internet (unless you’re being extremely cute).

Your list is all A- and B-Tier stuff. Definitely important, but not on the level of like, the personal computer. LLMs are likely on the S-Tier with the other things GP mentioned. Within a month of its release ChatGPT had 100 million users. Everyone in my life can tell me a way they’ve been affected by LLMs.

We can argue about whether LLMs are/will be good for humanity. We cannot argue about whether they’re a big deal, they are undeniable.

You raise good points and I want to dig into it more.

One counterpoint is that LLMs are still young. I think it's preemptive to proclaim now that LLMs are world-changing when we really don't know how they will affect us in the future. For e.g. the internet, it's undeniable that it changed the world because now everything is so much more interconnected than it was 30 years ago. The internet has become a foundational element of technology. Will LLMs do the same? Surely we don't know.

Second counterpoint: "everyone in my life can tell me a way they've been affected by LLMs". Can they? How are they affected, for real? Everyone is certainly talking about them, does that necessarily mean the impact is large? Honestly for me life is basically the same and I'm a developer! Still go to the same job, SDLC is largely the same, my hobbies are the same, eat the same food, etc. The important day to day is the same. Except that I code a little faster, have a fancier search / problem solving tool, and every now and then I see a crappy AI gen image. Compare to e.g. the internet which has undoubtably changed day to day by drastically reducing physical interaction between people and systems.

wifi is radio though

Smartphones deserve to be on that list as a technology which fundamentally affected the way we interact, and once you realise that you also understand how important WiFi is.

I'd say it was closer to 25 years from the invention of the personal computer to the point it made an impact on everyday life.

You could replace LLMs with Excel. Shit, even today, people are probably just using LLMs to populate excel sheets for consumption later lol.

Its a matter of opinion who cares what I think - if your list includes those things as fundamental changes that redefined society and technology then that's valid.

All I am saying is that LLMs are amongst the most revolutionary changes that break new ground and completely change the world - in my personal opinion.

Yeah I guess my point was there's a lot of opinion involved, especially at the moment. Which can play into the hype cycle. Full disclaimer I am an LLM semi-doubter so of course my opinion skews in that direction. We should see what the future evidence shows for the value of LLMs. Part of what the article touched on is historically the evidence often doesn't back up the hype, hence their disappointment.

LLMs could be one of the most revolutionary changes. The problem is that LLMs as a phenomenon are mostly wishful thinking and an acceptance of downgraded quality and reliability.

Sometimes they do useful things. But the gap between "sometimes" and "reliably" is not trivial.

It's honestly rather culty. I can see the hope that mistakes in today's vibe coding will be fixed by future vibe coding, which will be better in every way.

But it's not a given that's going to happen. Not on the evidence so far.

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