Thread

1. gradus_ad · 1790701889 · focus · HN ↗

   Ominous for the industry and investors that token price is becoming the main battleground. Could be Anthropic's rationale for IPOing this year.

   1. mixdup · 1790702708 · focus · HN ↗

      Another piece of evidence on the pile that the sudden panic and desire to "slow down" is because they're hitting the plateau on capability

      Which, honestly, is fine. A lot of juice to squeeze in efficiency and even if models got zero more capable, making the capability that is already here cheaper is a huge win for everyone (except Nvidia)

      1. luma · 1790705106 · focus · HN ↗

         Some version of this claim has been made for the past 4 years. There's a data cliff, there's no more compute to buy, the financials don't make sense and all of these orgs will be out of business by end of quarter.

         Not once has any of these predictions come true, the pace of progress has continued on it's exponential trajectory since ChatGPT first came to the public's attention.

         So why now? What is special about today that suggests all of this is coming to a screeching halt despite all evidence to the contrary?

         1. trentnix · 1790706955 · focus · HN ↗

            Yep. I've made the claim (and been wrong). I was convinced the data cliff was going to be a real problem. Now I feel like we are on the cusp of having Tony Stark's Jarvis at our fingertips.

            What a time to be alive.

            1. neta1337 · 1790712331 · focus · HN ↗

               Incredible how many times I read similar comments over the years, containing 'on the cusp' and 'what a time to be alive'. Indeed, what a time - not a single user-facing thing on the internet has improved since then, considering the power tool we got. The most used web services get drowned in generated stuff and so are the users

               1. trentnix · 1790713175 · focus · HN ↗

                  Not a single thing? In my house, we are using LLMs to:

                  - plan youth soccer practices

                  - develop well-formatted soccer game substitution schedules

                  - build and ship software in languages I haven't used in 25 years on platforms I've never programmed for

                  - do meal planning and build shopping lists

                  - prepare grocery shopping carts

                  - solicit medical advice

                  - perform Garmin watch data analysis

                  - administer devices (with SSH access) using natural language

                  - avoid counterfeit soccer jersey purchases

                  - create "Warrior Cat" graphic novels

                  - make cartoon strips

                  - troubleshoot appliances

                  - manage finances

                  - review accounting ledgers

                  - diagnose malware infections

                  - so much more

                  And we do it all from a simple prompt that we can talk to if we choose.

                  I've built more (and better) software in the past month than I did in any given year in the 30+ years I've been programming.

                  I can understand pessimism regarding how this affects society. I can understand pessimism regarding how this gets abused. But for the life of me there's no good reason at all to be pessimistic about how quickly this has improved.

                  1. FiberBundle · 1790715345 · focus · HN ↗

                     > I've built more (and better) software in the past month than I did in any given year in the 30+ years I've been programming

                     I feel similarly, but I think it's a valid question. Why is all the software I'm using not getting better? To be honest, I feel it's more buggy than it's ever been.

                     1. semiquaver · 1790736549 · focus · HN ↗

                        Companies need to radically change to be able to take advantage. Most companies are afraid to do that and are letting their engineers serve as slow meat proxies, doing software development basically the same way as before.

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