This time, it feels different
Geez people. Please learn to identify hypes, but most importantly the causes of hypes.<p>LLM is fundamentally information processing technology. Not the path to AGI, not an emerging sentience.<p>The reason "this time" feels so amazing is that the unwashed masses suddenly got access to new information processing technology in a context where their tools been <i>stagnant for decades</i>.<p>Not because it was not possible, but because there was no money in it.<p>To understand my argument and its implications, humor me for a moment and imagine a universe in which everyone was already using linux computers and for a decade now published papers of ML/DL were available for people to use. So  there were various crowdsourced indices and models of all sorts, which people incrementally embedded in their information processing workflows.<p>In that universe there would be no room for the delirious reaction we have here. It would be incremental evolution of search, knowledge bases, algorithmic content generation etc.<p>What we have experienced instead in these past decades is information tool <i>starvation</i>. These incrementally improving tools, while nothing but known and ultimately mundane algorithms were not available except within a tiny elite.<p>In fact, people's information processing capability arguably declined as the desktop platforms got downgraded, adtech toxic waste covered the information landscape etc.<p>What is happening now is that a socioeconomic and artificially induced scarcity is now being broken (for reasons that require serious piecing together of events).<p>So while on the surface this hype is as distastful as any illustration of
human lemming behaviour, there is enormous silver lining if we succeed to read its causes.<p>These tools are here, have been here for a while and they can be inserted into our ever growing information processing toolkit. The risks are there to match the opportunities.<p>The biggest risk of them all is precisely what has led to the current situation. Technology not diffusing normally, but controlled by gatekeepers.