Firstly, it's not really good enough to say "our employees use it" and therefore it's providing us significant value as a business. It's also not good enough to say "our programmers now write 10x the number of lines of code and therefore that's providing us value" (lines of code have never been a good indicator of output). Significant value comes from new innovations.
Secondly, the scale of investment in AI isn't so that people can use it to generate a powerpoint or a one off python script. The scale of investment is to achieve "superintelligence" (whatever that means). That's the only reason why you would cover a huge percent of the country in datacenters.
The proof that significant value has been provided would be value being passed on to the consumer. For example if AI replaces lawyers you would expect a drop in the cost of legal fees (despite the harm that it also causes to people losing their jobs). Nothing like that has happened yet.
When I can replace a CAD license that costs $250/usr/mo with an applet written by gemini in an hour, that's a hard tangible gain.
Did Gemini write a CAD program? Absolutely not. But do I need 100% of the CAD program's feature set? Absolutely not. Just ~2% of it for what we needed.
Someone correct me if I'm mistaken but don't CAD programs rely on a geometric modeling kernel? From what I understand this part is incredibly hard to get right and the best implementations are proprietary. No LLM is going to be able to get to that level anytime soon.
Sounds like GP is just in need for a G-Code to DXF converter when they mention "fringe stuff, cnc machine files from the 80's/90's" as answer to a sibling comment, though.
There are great FOSS CAD tools available nowadays (LibreCAD, FreeCAD, OpenSCAD etc.), especially for people who only need 2% of a feature set. But then again, I doubt that GP is really in need of a CAD software, or even writing one with the help of Gemini.
I agree, the applet which google plageurized through its Gemini tool saves you money. Why keep the middle man though? At this point, just pirate a copy.
I don't think it's plagiarized, nor would I pirate a copy. The workflow through the Gemini made app is way better (it's customized exactly for our inputs) and totally different than how the CAD program did it. So I wouldn't pirate a copy not even because our business runs above board, but also because the CAD version is actually also worse for our use. This is also pretty fringe stuff, cnc machine files from the 80's/90's.
Part of the magic of LLMs is getting the exact bespoke tools you need, tailored specifically to your individual needs.
Of course it's plagiarized. Perhaps not directly from the CAD software in question, but when you use an LLM, you are by definition plagiarizing by way of the data it was trained on.
You’re attacking one or two examples mentioned in their comment, when we could step back and see that in reality you’re pushing against the general scientific consensus. Which you’re free to do, but I suspect an ideological motivation behind it.
To me, the arguments sound like “there’s no proof typewriters provide any economic value to the world, as writers are fast enough with a pen to match them and the bottleneck of good writing output for a novel or a newspaper is the research and compilation parts, not the writing parts. Not to mention the best writers swear by writing and editing with a pen and they make amazing work”.
All arguments that are not incorrect and that sound totally reasonable in the moment, but in 10 years everyone is using typewriters and there are known efficiency gains for doing so.
I'm not saying LLMs are useless. But the value they have provided so far does not justify covering the country in datacenters and the scale of investment overall (not even close!).
The only justification for that would be "superintelligence," but we don't know if this is even the right way of achieve that.
(Also I suspect the only reason why they are as cheap as they are is because of all the insane amount of money they've been given. They're going to have to increase their prices.)
Quite a large bubble. The burden of proof for demonstrating the enormous economic value LLMs are providing really is yours. Sure, there are anecdotal benefits to using LLMs, but we haven't seen any evidence that in aggregate businesses across America are benefitting. Other than AI companies, the stock market isn't even doing well. You would think that with massive expected efficiency gains companies would be doing better across the board. Are businesses that use AI generating significantly higher profits? I haven't seen any evidence of it yet (and I'm really looking for it, and would love to see it!). It's pure speculation so far.
Careful not to assume I’m more bullish than I am. I said there’s value, I didn’t say there’s enormous value equal to the investment bubble. I see this as similar to the dot com boom. Websites were and are valuable things, even if people got too excited in 2002 about it.
The scale and stakes of the investment now are much, much higher now than in dot com. Likewise, don't assume I'm more bearish than I am. But enormous investment requires more benefit than has been realized.
Uh, I must have missed the “consensus” here, especially when many studies are showing a productivity decrease from AI use. I think you’ve just conjured the idea of this “scientific consensus” out of thin air to deflect criticism.
Secondly, the scale of investment in AI isn't so that people can use it to generate a powerpoint or a one off python script. The scale of investment is to achieve "superintelligence" (whatever that means). That's the only reason why you would cover a huge percent of the country in datacenters.
The proof that significant value has been provided would be value being passed on to the consumer. For example if AI replaces lawyers you would expect a drop in the cost of legal fees (despite the harm that it also causes to people losing their jobs). Nothing like that has happened yet.