I think it’s safe to assume that in the next few years almost all consumer hardware will be able to run a local LLM comfortably. And no one knows if LLMs can go beyond GPT-4 in a way that will genuinely blow people away.
> (...) almost all consumer hardware will be able to run a local LLM comfortably.
The last thing we want. For example, car manufacturers tried to make voice command work and the results are still unreliable; they also had experimented with touch screens and those are going away, because they are a poor and unsafe way to operate a moving vehicle. People want tactile feedback and ability to operate them without taking their eyes off the road. Why would anybody want an LLM in my camera, phone, washing machine, thermostat?
I personally don’t want that. In my opinion, this current iteration of LLM is completely overblown and I am perplexed as to how quickly it is getting adopted into everything.
Of course, LLMs are useful. For small tasks, there is a significant productivity boost to be had, but they are not trustworthy. And that is the main issue.
If we see them as untrustworthy, then perhaps it is necessary to accelerate their exposure into consumer technology as a means to show that an LLM can cause harm - in whatever form that may come.
It’s very easy to overlook LLMs making things up, but they do (including GPT4) - and if that can’t be solved then it’s safe to assume this hype will be short-lived.
All tech that becomes ubiquitous is based on giving humans answers that do not change based a throw of coin. Your bank account statement shows the same balance for the same end of day query no matter when you request it; your GPS gives you directions to the same place every time you put in the same destination address, not to a place that looks like a probable destination you might want. The best uses for AI are those that do not use generative BS, but for ML that give us answers, patterns, action scripts. Our brains are wired for survival and constantly look for answers, patterns, and scripts that do not change at random. There is a reason why movies and stories follow a hero's arc. We want order, life is chaotic enough. Not realising that will be a rude awakening for all investors in generative AI.
