I really like the interesting context you provide via storytelling about the use of daguerrotypes by historical explorers, and making the connection to LLMs.
When I think about how the daguerrotype fits into a technological arc, I view it as:
An interesting first version of a consumer technology, but also
Something that was quite comedically fundamentally flawed — imagining an explorer arduously grappling with sheets of polished silver to get a grainy, monochrome sketch of their vivid endeavours is quite amusing
I think your comparison to LLMs holds well for 1), but is less compelling for 2). I know you state a disclaimer of not making a comment about “certain amount of useful or useless” but you do talk about how useful LLMs are for you, and I think it is relevant to make a comparison.
Sometimes I want to know something more subjective, like “what do people generally think about X?” I would think LLMs would be better at this kind of summary
but we already know that given an individual statement LLMs are highly capable of text classification — extending this for Reddit-style consensus feels like a relatively small engineering change versus a daguerrotype-to-camera type jump.
LLMs do have some funny flaws, like hallucination and sycophancy, but personally I can’t map these to be comparable to the daguerrotype and I speculate that ChatGPT will be viewed less like a “comedically flawed first try at the future thing” (like daguerrotype-camera) and more like a “promising first version of the future thing” (like typewriter-digital word processor).
I really like the interesting context you provide via storytelling about the use of daguerrotypes by historical explorers, and making the connection to LLMs.
When I think about how the daguerrotype fits into a technological arc, I view it as:
An interesting first version of a consumer technology, but also
Something that was quite comedically fundamentally flawed — imagining an explorer arduously grappling with sheets of polished silver to get a grainy, monochrome sketch of their vivid endeavours is quite amusing
I think your comparison to LLMs holds well for 1), but is less compelling for 2). I know you state a disclaimer of not making a comment about “certain amount of useful or useless” but you do talk about how useful LLMs are for you, and I think it is relevant to make a comparison.
As you point out hundreds of millions of people use ChatGPT — 1 million used it in the first 5 days of release, and OpenAI anticipate 1 billion users by the end of 2025. This does imply ease of use and good product-world fit.
You state:
but we already know that given an individual statement LLMs are highly capable of text classification — extending this for Reddit-style consensus feels like a relatively small engineering change versus a daguerrotype-to-camera type jump.
LLMs do have some funny flaws, like hallucination and sycophancy, but personally I can’t map these to be comparable to the daguerrotype and I speculate that ChatGPT will be viewed less like a “comedically flawed first try at the future thing” (like daguerrotype-camera) and more like a “promising first version of the future thing” (like typewriter-digital word processor).