Comment by podgorniy
Adjustment: not progress, the hype.
People belive that LLM progress will become foundation of the future economy expansion the same way as microelectronics did. But for now there are few signs of that economic benefit from AI/LLM stuff. If one do math of what productivity increase tech should give in order to have positive ROI, one would be surprised how reality is far from feasibility of investments https://www.bruegel.org/working-paper/tension-between-explod.... Yes, anecdotally people tell stories how they can code twice/trice/ten times faster, or how they atumated their whole workflow or replaced support with LLM. But that's far not enough for AI investment feasibility in existing businesses (AI startups will flurish for a while on venture money). Also anecdotally there are many failed attempts to replace people with LLMs (like mcdonalds ordering which resulted in crazy orders).
So what we have is a hype on top of beliefs in progress as continious phenomena. But progress itself has slowed greately. Where are all breakthroughs which change our way of living? Pocket computers and consumer electronics (which is not a discovery rather an optimisation) and internet (also more about scaling than inventing) were the last. 3d printing, cancer treatment, robotics thought to be the new factors. Till AI/LLM. Now AIs/LLMs are the last resourt for believers in progress and technooptimists like Musk.
>>Pocket computers and consumer electronics (which is not a discovery rather an optimisation)
Can you really describe a process like EUV lithography an optimisation? I mean it requires matter to be controlled and manipulated in a way that would have been regarded as pure science fiction 20 years ago. Also the material science that provided Gallium Nitride electronics in our communcation system is rather amazing. There are other things as well - I have an electric car with a battery that lets me travel for hundreds of kilometers, if I trusted it, it could take me there without me operating it (much). I know where I am in London and where I am going because of satellites in geosynchronous orbits and calculations that use relativity. Last year I got an mRNA vaccine, that's pretty new... and pretty pervasive. I've seen rockets that fly up into space and then turn around and come back down to land, and I spend my days talking face to face with people on the other side of the world. I've never met half of them, but they greet me as an old friend.
How is it that you can't see any of these wonders that have sprung into being in our life times?