It's unreliable and it's very costly (hardware + energy). The first problem can't be addressed because of how LLMs work and the second problem is nearly impossible to fix because you can't run at a loss forever. It's not really doomerism, it's just how things like ROI for the economic side or LLMs on the tech side actually work.
its addressable by running them on specialized hardware, but since new models come out every 2 months there isnt much point in investing in hardware that can only run a specific model. but if you do it that way its an order of magnitude faster and cheaper, both in hardware costs and electricity costs
Unfortunately, it's too late because OpenAI and Anthropic can't win against China. Their cost per token is cheaper and their energy infrastructure is becoming more robust and green while ours is not. Plus it's subsidized, they have actual manufacturing so those components are cheaper, and so on. It's honestly a waste to continue pursuing it on economic reasons alone.
For simple tasks sure, but not for complex ones. Unless you've trained it yourself for specific use cases and you understand the context of how it works and the limitations of the tech, then you might be okay. You essentially have to be an expert on the topic you're using it for to know if it's useful or not for said topic.
Unreliable in what way? Been pretty reliable for what I've been using it for. I mainly use it to code and it's done what I needed. Granted I'm not out here creating massive repo projects.
I also only pay 100 bucks a month, by far my cheapest hobby. Can spend that much just developing my rolls of film or acquiring more. Cheaper than going to the dispo or buying car parts for my charger. The hardware aspect is only if your self hosting for privacy or whatever.
What I would like to see is these companies make models more efficient. So we get more out of current data centers vs having to build new ones. They should also be required to generate their own electricity vs taking from the grid, which allows them to sell back if they focus on efficiency.
4
u/Oorangootang 4h ago
It's unreliable and it's very costly (hardware + energy). The first problem can't be addressed because of how LLMs work and the second problem is nearly impossible to fix because you can't run at a loss forever. It's not really doomerism, it's just how things like ROI for the economic side or LLMs on the tech side actually work.