How is life qualitatively or quantitatively better now that we have access to these things? What were we all going without, for our entire lives, that is a noticeable net improvement, and that isn’t swallowed up by increased demand and noise?
It’s one thing to make up rubrics and say that the models are scoring ever higher on them, while “the graph goes up and to the right”. But on a practical level, what was so wrong or unbearable with the world before that introducing an LLM would revolutionize for the better? What software was so broken, or what process was so inaccessible, that the raw computational approach became the best solution? I’m actually open to hearing about this.
There are tons of ways LLMs have already improved daily life. Before LLMs, trying to translate a document required either hiring a translator or wrestling with clunky rule-based systems that often produced gibberish. Today, a model delivers usable translations in seconds. These might not be perfect, but they’re far ahead of anything that was possible before. And these things are also helping people with disabilities, somebody with dyslexia or a blind professional had to wait days for accessible documents. Now, screen readers paired with LLMs can summarize, rephrase, and read aloud any PDF in real time. Researchers spent countless hours skimming through hundreds of pages of regulatory filings or legal opinions to find a single relevant clause. Now, they ask a question and have a machine find the answer with citations. These are just a few examples of genuine and cumulative improvements that free people from drudgery and lower barriers for those who were previously locked out.
And here’s a concrete illustration of how this tech can be used on the left to level the playing field allowing regular people to do what used to take a whole team of analysts before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQog2g_zoJ8
Examples of this tech being useful are only hard to find for people who choose to be aggressively ignorant on the subject.
How is life qualitatively or quantitatively better now that we have access to these things? What were we all going without, for our entire lives, that is a noticeable net improvement, and that isn’t swallowed up by increased demand and noise?
It’s one thing to make up rubrics and say that the models are scoring ever higher on them, while “the graph goes up and to the right”. But on a practical level, what was so wrong or unbearable with the world before that introducing an LLM would revolutionize for the better? What software was so broken, or what process was so inaccessible, that the raw computational approach became the best solution? I’m actually open to hearing about this.
There are tons of ways LLMs have already improved daily life. Before LLMs, trying to translate a document required either hiring a translator or wrestling with clunky rule-based systems that often produced gibberish. Today, a model delivers usable translations in seconds. These might not be perfect, but they’re far ahead of anything that was possible before. And these things are also helping people with disabilities, somebody with dyslexia or a blind professional had to wait days for accessible documents. Now, screen readers paired with LLMs can summarize, rephrase, and read aloud any PDF in real time. Researchers spent countless hours skimming through hundreds of pages of regulatory filings or legal opinions to find a single relevant clause. Now, they ask a question and have a machine find the answer with citations. These are just a few examples of genuine and cumulative improvements that free people from drudgery and lower barriers for those who were previously locked out.
And here’s a concrete illustration of how this tech can be used on the left to level the playing field allowing regular people to do what used to take a whole team of analysts before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQog2g_zoJ8
Examples of this tech being useful are only hard to find for people who choose to be aggressively ignorant on the subject.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy: