The tech sector is pouring billions of dollars into AI. But it keeps laying off humans::The tech sector has kicked off the new year with a spate of fresh job cuts that are coming at the same time as the industry is doubling down on investments into artificial intelligence.
I work/study in AI, and it is completely over-hyped. For one thing, the C-suite can’t wrap it’s head around the fact that AI != LLM; they all seem to think all AI is just LLMs. On top of that, they are way too eager to throw humans out of the loop.
That said, I think LLM applications, even in their current form, are super useful in development and business practices. I myself use it to increase my productivity in coding. But, I use it as an augmentation rather than a replacement. One of my friends put it best the other day, “LLMs are like a junior dev to your senior dev. You need to be hyper-specific, and you need to check it’s output.” In other words, it’s great for off-loading some work, but it isn’t going to completely replace humans.
With that said, I’m a bit annoyed that other AI fields are being over-shadowed by LLMs. There’s a ton of other interesting work being done in those fields that is super useful and important. All of them, though, are not going to replace humans but rather augment and make humans more productive. I’ve found that an AI-Human team is most effective.
AI != LLM… a thousand times yes. We’re seeing a boom of LLMs and those have their limits too, but it’s the closest we gotten to “true AI” and it’s the buzz word C-Suites have latched on to. Look at blockchain and where that went for them
Agreed, I’m a backend dev and I regularly use ChatGPT to help me think through problems, spot pernicious errors, refactor, etc. ChatGPT is really, really cool, but imo, not as cool as AlphaFold. I feel like every time I do manage to hear about an AI development that’s not a diffusor and LLM, it’s really, really cool.