Pylimitics

Large language models actually work. They’re not fake, and they’re surprising, amazing technology. LLMs are real. The LLM vendors and their business models, though, might be something else again. They’ve raised historic amounts of money, which the venture capitalists are going to want repaid at some point. But if you examine their revenues, expenses, and potential profits (or lack of them), the numbers don’t seem to add up to them ever being able to repay the gargantuan sums they’ve raised. 

This puts the “AI industry” in the somewhat odd position of having products that are real and have actual benefits, but having businesses that are at least questionable, and at worst fraudulent. I think it’s more common to find both a business and its products equally scammy. 

This situation has produced software that’s legitimately useful, but a firehose of marketing hype from the vendors that’s also reaching historic levels. Some of this is driven by Elon Musk, one of the world’s premier liars propagandists, but frankly all the business leaders in the AI sector seem to be acting the same way. And it gets worse than that; it feels like the whole technology industry is getting more and more disingenuous. Silicon valley has always generated terabytes of bloviation, of course, but in the past few years the hype got dialed up to 11. It’s all “AI,” “robots,” “self-driving,” and “autonomous.” Yet at the same time, the same companies are breathlessly proclaiming how important “design” is to them, how “ethical” they are (read: how ethical they want you to think they are), and how they’re “changing the world for the better.” 

As for LLM technology, the headlong rush to build ever-bigger data centers sits a bit awkwardly with the fact that it’s quite possible to have a working, useful LLM on your own computer. You need a pretty good computer, but all you need is an off-the-shelf system. Except that what’s available on that shelf has some new limitations because the large LLM vendors have bought the majority of required components, especially memory chips, so it’s suddenly more difficult to get a computer with high-end specifications you might want or need. Funny how that works. It reminds me of the recent story about the super-high-end chips produced by NVidia. They’re chips used in those giant AI data centers. NVidia announced they had sold some astronomical number of them. But diligent searching through the information provided by the companies running those data centers couldn’t find any evidence of those chips being installed anywhere. 

Like too much else in recent years, the whole situation is worrying and confusing. People are occupying positions that have traditionally been afforded respect and have conveyed credibility. You might look askance at the person running the local “driveway sealant” company, but the leader of a multi-billion-dollar enterprise was generally accorded a certain level of trust. The assumption, I think, was that it took a long time to reach that position, and lots of people had to be convinced that the person was a good choice for increasingly responsible jobs. 

I don’t think that’s the operative assumption any more. Have managers, executives, and directors have gotten more gullible lately? Have con artists gotten more skilled? Has language itself become more powerful, more successful at convincing people of unreasonable things they were once better able to reason about?

There are situations and circumstances that cause most people to be less able to think clearly and reasonably. Fear can have that effect, especially when it’s fear of some rapidly approaching danger. When you become convinced there’s a catastrophe looming just ahead, and you might be able to figure out a way to survive but you have to do it right now, that is, of course, when your ability to think clearly and quickly can seemingly evaporate. 

I think that might be what’s going on. Managers, executives, and directors live in the same world as the rest of us, and there’s all sorts of existential threats looming just ahead. We’re in the process of wrecking the ecosystem we depend on; the only one we have. The most powerful and destructive military empire in history is in the hands of a tyrant who acts impulsively, rashly, and without regard to consequences. The money of the world is being funneled, faster and faster, into the greedy hands of a few misanthropic hoarders. Wars are springing up unexpectedly, and are being fought with a level of viciousness and hate that at least some people had hoped had been left behind in the previous century. We’ve provided practically every individual with devices they bought to help them communicate, but those devices are instead shutting down communication and ramping up merciless surveillance. 

In that maelstrom, is it any wonder? People are acting more stupidly, and it’s because everybody is getting scared.