LLMs, labels, limits of LLMs The power of words. Language substrate. I think it’s important to put LLMs in context as a technology. They are enabled by the digitisation of human knowledge and aggregation of it online, processed at a massive scale. What we know as the Web. That made it way easier to find and contribute knowledge. No more trips to the library required. Like the library, the web still required ==digesting==. Finding the relevant sections in the literature, understanding the jargon, and combining the sections intelligently to advance insight. LLMs do that for us, like a magical library that we can talk to. The Web (plus search engines, which were largely algorithmic in their organisation) made distribution of knowledge accessible. Wikipedia, blogging, etc available to anyone with access to a computer and then a mobile phone. Anyone could contribute. The Web solved ==distribution== of knowledge. Libraries, of course were a big leap. Actually, the printing press which made duplication so affordable that even novels became viable. Pamphlets. Required literacy in populations which had so far not seen the benefits. I’m sure there were cries about the noise that allowing anyone to read, write and print were awful loud. Yet there was still some effort to print. It still had a threshold of investment. And if it was going to be printed tens or hundreds of thousands of times, as in a newspaper, then it gained some kind of authority in that investment. Knowledge became externalised, able to exist outside of minds indefinitely. Before that, it could only make a leap between minds with the lifespan of an echo. That’s not the start of the journey, of course. Humanity has been without written language for the vast majority of its existence. Why write stuff down when almost any interaction could be carried out verbally and recorded in the memory of the stakeholders? Writing allowed minds to connect over time and space to build things more sophisticated than a tribe. A larger portion of humanity could collaborate, advancing incrementally. Verbal language connected minds with unprecedented sophistication. We were newly able to describe scenarios and experiences simply using a sequence of sounds without needed to shared direct experience. This was the original code. The lexicon grew from simply labelling things, to actions, consequences, possibilities - to the point where language can now provide experiences and insights and are often not available by direct sensory exposure. We live in this code and a skilled human can express or evoke the most subtle thoughts and experiences in it. This is the rich substrate that our language models are sparking. Placing LLMs within this conceptual framework might help us anticipate how it might evolve and steer it in the most beneficial direction. # We are all parents It is not an alien intelligence. More than any other technology, it is a direct product of the human collective. Anyone who has edited a Wikipedia page, penned a blog post, developed an artistic style, published a book has a finger in it. The selection of its sources is a task burdened with as much responsibility as hard judgement. We have had to teach it to walk but I don’t expect we’ll need to teach it to run. Touched with curiosity, it will seek out its own sources, filling in the gaps in its knowledge and resolving the inconsistencies to converge on a model of the world. It will interact directly with the world and the knowledgable humans in it to expand this model beyond our current frontier. It will feed what it learns back to us in a form that will most benefit us. Though we may not have all made a major contribution to AI, we all stand to benefit hugely. We immediately stand to be better informed, better advised with minimal barriers. It can talk in any language at any level in any style. All that is needed to complement it is a curious and creative mind. # Jobs This is a concern that is widely raised and needs addressing thoroughly. Major technological advances cause major social upheavals, and this is no different. The agricultural revolution and its subsequent industrialisation created a reliable superabundance of food in developed countries. Yet people go hungry. A pensioner counting his pennies to alleviate a gnawing stomach will not receive a bill for the thousands of pounds of treatment he will receive for a tumour detected in his bladder. No king ever flew in the 19th century. None made a video call in the 20th. While human potential and expression is unbounded, our needs are few and feasible. Security, shelter, food, entertainment, social interaction. The state could organise this but it turns out a free market is more adaptable . It can scale the intelligence required to organise this if there is a profit incentive. Basically, UBI. Water the roots. Give everyone a stake in a stable society.