I think everyone who has an opnion, good or bad, about LLMs, should read how @simonwillison.net has summer up what’s happened in the space this year. He’s the most credible, most independent, most honest, and most technically fluent person watching the space. simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/... - ThreadSky

anildash.com • 57 days ago

I think everyone who has an opnion, good or bad, about LLMs, should read how @simonwillison.net has summer up what’s happened in the space this year. He’s the most credible, most independent, most honest, and most technically fluent person watching the space. https://simonwillison.net/2024/Dec/31/llms-in-2024/

Comments

twotwotwo.bsky.social•57 days ago

Yes--he's testing their boundaries, not on a company's payroll so is happy to say when things don't work or talk about problems others have pointed out, and has been doing it broadly enough and for long enough to talk about trends and differences, not just one-off impressions

twotwotwo.bsky.social•57 days ago

The 'harder to use' section says a lot: recognizes what LLMs *aren't* (not reliable, and not search engines or all-knowing oracles), and that Twitter users hyping them up aren't helping. Realizing that and also playing with them is rare.

clevertrope.bsky.social•57 days ago

Hes being so credulous re: pricing, hard to take seriously. That shit is not scaled to environmental impact ffs.

anildash.com•57 days ago

What’s your issue with the pricing part?

clevertrope.bsky.social•57 days ago

The assumption that it will continue to go down and we are not about to be enshittified.

jukevox.bsky.social•56 days ago

I dont seem him assuming that the prices will continue to go down. Just stating that they have in the last year.

The opportunities with open source models, running them at the edge and small language models are also counterbalances to the enshittification step.

webrant.bsky.social•56 days ago

What matters as their scam spins its wheels for investors and gets adopted by everyone they can bribe, is the MASSIVE energy consumption.

That terrible terawatt drain at the worst time in history is the existential peril they provide.

https://energynow.com/2024/12/ai-wants-more-data-more-chips-more-real-estate-more-power-more-water-more-everything/

anildash.com•56 days ago

I think it’s pretty likely the energy consumption will go down to being comparable to video playback or even other types of searches.

shayelk.in•56 days ago

No one seems to care how much cycles big tech spends on encoding user uploaded video that would be rarely watched.

anildash.com•56 days ago

Or even encoding video that they don’t have the rights to.

cellyam.bsky.social•56 days ago

How? Why?

anildash.com•56 days ago

It’s actually covered in the link I shared.

johnrogers.bsky.social•57 days ago

📌

mnent.bsky.social•57 days ago

📌

toddwalker.bsky.social•56 days ago

“I think telling people that this whole field is environmentally catastrophic plagiarism machines that constantly make things up is doing those people a disservice, no matter how much truth that represents.”

Um, WHAT?

friendo.bsky.social•57 days ago

telling the truth is a disservice

micbi.bsky.social•56 days ago

Atm they are comparatively bad for the environment
there is no serious unsupervised task they could perform
and we still have no philosophical answer to copyright woes.

All of these can be true, and 90% of CEOs be assholes, while the work done by people in the know being intriguing and stimulating.

bobooten.bsky.social•57 days ago

There’s a pony underneath all this horse shit we just have to keep digging.

friendo.bsky.social•57 days ago

powerful people are throwing infinite resources at this stuff and we should humor them because of "value", this is called better criticism

bobooten.bsky.social•57 days ago

Simon Willison is one of the good guys. I read him for a sanity check on ai matters.

friendo.bsky.social•57 days ago

ha yeah tbf hes prob good from an industry standpoint understanding the ins and out etc but that piece and the general publics problems with ai are ships passing in the night

anildash.com•57 days ago

The issue is that their critiques increasingly get disconnected from what’s meaningful as a result. It’s absolutely valid to point out the attacks on labor, but the “it’s taking our drinking water!” is largely absurd yet people refuse to look at the reality around that.

smoroden.com•57 days ago

📌

eddieperez.bsky.social•57 days ago

“I like people who are skeptical of this stuff. The hype has been deafening for more than two years now, and there are enormous quantities of snake oil and misinformation out there…Being critical is a virtue.”

So why, then, bury your tepid criticisms until the very end of a long wonky piece? 🤷‍♂️

anildash.com•57 days ago

Because he thinks his readers are smart and have an attention span of more than 5 seconds, or are able to read the table of contents linked at the top?