this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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It's technology with many valid use-cases. The misapplication of the technology by capital doesn't make the tech itself inherently reactionary.
It's incredibly power hungry.
except this one doesn't require as much power and training costs, which is where the resource intensive problem resides.
The context of the discussion is that it's already 50x less power hungry than just a little while ago.
For now. We've been seeing great strides in reducing that power hunger recently, including by the LLM that's the subject of this post.
That also doesn't make it inherently reactionary.
Due to the market economy in both the United State and China, further development of LLM efficiency is probably the worst thing that could possibly happen. Even if China did not want to subject LLMs to market forces, they are going to need to compete with the US. This is going further accelerate the climate disaster.
Again, an issue with capitalism and not the technology itself.
Well I agree with you there. Too bad there's all this capitalism.
For now. Are we supposed to just halt all technological progress because capitalism is inevitably going to misuse it? Should we stop trying to develop new medical treatments and drugs because capitalism is going to prevent all but the wealthiest from accessing them in our lifetime?
Regardless, my point was that the tech itself isn't inherently reactionary. Not that it won't be misused under capitalism.
A hundred years ago I'd agree with you that technological progress is more important. Now, I don't know. We need to be triaging the climate crisis instead of wasting time making shit exponentially worse. I half jokingly believe that western knowledge workers should go full luddite and smash data centers and backups. Joking because western knowledge workers would never do that in a million years.
Medical technology doesnt carry the same negatives. I don't agree with Other Person that it's inherently reactionary, but the theoretical value of its benevolent application doesn't mean much when, for all intents and purposes, it serves reactionary goals right now, in the material world
One of the use-cases of this technology is assisting in drug discovery and medical research, which is why I gave it as an example.
Kind of wondering why China needs to compete in this realm? Unless their is something from LLM's that improves the productive forces in a country, I don't see any other reason.
At least the space race had something to do with a strategic military advantage
Vacuum tubes were too
LLMs literally cannot do anything else other than reproduce data it has been given. The closer the output is to the input, the better it is. Now if the input is "all the data that capitalism has produced" then the expected output is "an infinite amount of variations on that data". That's why it is reactionary.