This is a bit different to the usual technical stuff I write. I want to talk about LLMs. Whilst an amazing piece of technology (magic), they do play heavily into the hands of large corporations. I suppose this stuff is quite obvious but I thought I’d write it anyhow!
Why is this?
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They commodify skill and knowledge such that it is centralised, and no longer distributed amongst a variety of places and humans, like the internet. Whilst this initially seems like a great idea, once this is behind a paywall we will all be reliant on it in the extreme, and ultimately knowledge disparity will occur in all it’s forms.
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The moat is actually computing power, crucially the technology can only be built by those with resources, and this is in a much more unbalanced way than with previous technologies. So unless someone comes along with a radically different approach to computing, like temporal computing, for these models, then those with the compute power will have control.
However all is not lost! - So what do I think will happen:
- This situation is like mainframes in the 50’s and 60’s initially centralised eventually decentralised, into PCs. We just need a few Wozniaks to build local first AI, and we can all have our own personal learning companion.
- This shift will take great ingenuity and it must be clearly for the good of humanity, not to build yet another monopoly!