I tend to agree, Chris, although ‘die’ is a bit too strong for my opinion. Generative AI and LLM AI in particular are potentially dangerous in the hands of people who overlook the complete lack of intelligence they embody. But the usefulness of such systems is still pretty impressive.

I think what has caught the imagination (and pocket books) of the researchers and their corporate overlords is the fact that there was a huge surge in capability in LLMs a few years ago. LLMs started being able to do things that the developers had never really expected: write moderately capable computer code, for example. No one really planned on that sort of ’emergent’ behaviour becoming remotely as effective as it has.

And I use generative AI all the time: to find quick answers (that are often subtly wrong), to review my written words for errors or unintentional tonal qualities, to generate quick-and-dirty images based on prompts. I could see it being adapted into a really good sort of ‘helper’ conversational system like a friendly but kind of mentally sketchy companion. It is all pretty useful and I like having another tool at my disposal.

That means I don’t necessarily want such AI to ‘die’. I don’t wish for ‘model collapse’. But I do wish that some people who are far smarter and vastly more educated than I am could get the funding and support the LLM folks receive to figure out something better. Model collapse could be the thing that pushes those smart people and the money they need in that direction.

I don’t think throwing more data, processing power, and electricity at LLMs will suddenly make such generative models become intelligent in a general sense. I think we’ve pretty much seen all the surprising tricks and emergent behaviour LLMs have to offer. Something new like some kind of ‘executive’ intelligence layer is needed, something that can develop a reality-based model of ‘truth’ and ‘accuracy’. The kind of thing a 3 year old learns by sticking their finger in hot water or by seeing how lies hurt people including themselves, only (hopefully) more efficient.