alt Hacker News> LLMs are vectorial databases with losses that index statistically filled data
Yes, and that statistically filled data is insanely useful. It remains true that it's a relatively poorly understood how this can be applied in various scenarios and what processes are needed to ensure robust results (or quantify the uncertainty).
What is it insanely useful for? (Besides convincing investors to sink more money into LLM-related companies? Because that is the one thing it does seem to truly be good at.)
LLMs generate text output that appears to be useful, but regularly is not. They're alleged to be a substantial boost to writing code, but that verdict seems to be in dispute. They can generate custom mediocre prose at scale, but that seems to be of ultimately limited utility (although it may be a godsend for propagandists).
We're coming up on the 4th anniversary of ChatGPT's release. And while I get that revolutionary technologies can take a while to mature, the Wright Brothers and Goddard weren't preaching imminent societal transformation by the end to the decade from the rooftops, either. (And that's before we get into the how they got there - getting to ignore laws and steal whatever they wanted might be insanely useful to a lot of people.)