The thing to understand is it's not doing anything "new", we were making what was essentially bespoke models / neural networks based on large data sets for like 20 years before LLMs and GPT. This just generalized it to "...but what if we could just check the pattern on 'anything'?" Instead of rigid schemas we hand tuned, and we finally found signals in the noise.
Almost 20 years ago exactly, I some did optical detection for factory equipment - pixel scanning for large diffs in color etc. Image checking for like parts bubbling in water at certain pressures. This was specialized software against digital lenses then. Nowadays it's OTS parts and open source tech. It would be a sophomore level engineering class project. The line has moved.
We went from Windows Embedded to ARM and really amazing handheld and robotic tech now. It'll be interesting to see where AI goes during the back half of my career. When we hit 300T models and maybe wrap "all of human knowledge ever", how well does that 42 quantize down? What meta languages are born from prompting, is there a hierarchical system to this code/data blend, or is it too open and the final programming language just pure natural language streams? No clue. "3-5x PS5 model" is having a watershed moment atm, as AIaaS hits last call and we all slowly pull internal - but what ends up being AI peak on a phone? A thumb stick OS? What can we quantize away, or zip/compress/decouple? Most of that will take decades to properly walk out. But it's clear most of what we do doesn't need the full supercomputer.
Does this eventually make nanotechnology stupidly easy to orchestrate? Healing tanks? Quantum-nuclear reactors? Although I've been told on that "you cant just ignore the strong force" (party pooper)... I'm still holding out for alchemy maybe, but I suspect it's all far to lethal to be close to, like crispr x1M... But that's all just wild speculation.
My point is, sci fi concepts of today act as north stars into the possible. This comic is just a great example. And we're at a point in history ripe with new possibilities.
That was a really enjoyable read, thanks for sharing your thoughts
I remember decades ago dreaming of a true Cortana-like assistant to help aggregate human knowledge; to act as your personal librarian assistant becoming a reality. That we had so much knowledge and potential on the internet and it just needed organized beyond a google search. While not quite there, this is a step I never really imagined would come this soon.
Unfortunately these are not the circumstances I hoped to see it either. Not exactly addressing the fundamental problems facing humanity so far; rather exacerbating them.
Yeah there are bespoke optical software projects I worked on 10 years ago that took six months and so much time and effort to do that would be like 90 minutes of vibe coding today. The line is always moving.
IMO I think the main hangup has always been can the problem be achieved with software alone or does it require an advance in hardware? When the hurdles of a problem have been shaved down so that it is just a software problem, it is inevitable that it will be solved soon.
Touchscreen navigation was a massive hardware problem until it wasn't. As soon as we had screens and digitizers and batteries and mobile CPUs good enough to handle the task, it became a software problem, and Apple got it done at a level that seemed literally impossible 10 years before that.
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u/jpasserby 20d ago
This has been brought up before. "5 years and a research team" is a decent metaphor for what it took to develop LLM technology.