@Ced
GCC at the time was thought of as something no volunteer could build.

They did it anyway.

There is nothing inherent about the technology behind LLMs that can't be built by a sufficiently determined group of volunteers.

The fact that current LLMs require whole data centres to run has more to do with (a) the fact that companies take performance shortcuts because they have money to burn and it takes them to market faster,
@mjg59

@Ced
and (b) them wanting to serve millions of users which requires more compute, than it is about limitations inherent in the technology.

All you need to replicate this is a sufficiently large data set, a bit of compute time, and an open source license.
@mjg59

@Ced
I don't think that anyone is claiming that we have that today. Certainly I didn't read Matthew's post that started off this thread in that way.

There's a subset of people in the free software community that go 'all LLM bad'. I don't necessarily agree with that.
@mjg59

Yes, current LLM bad, because of the unethical behaviour of the companies pushing it. And yes, that's reason enough to dislike current LLMs.

But the tech itself is not terrible, and if we can build it ethically, can be useful.
@mjg59 @Ced

@foxyoreos
It's possible to argue for a technology that you can see could theoretically exist even if you don't see it existing today.

I mean, someone in the early eighties had a rant about a printer and decided he wanted to argue for a free operating system.
@mjg59 @petko

@foxyoreos
It is a prerequisite to using, yes, but not a prerequisite to seeing the possibilities of the technologies and/or arguing that there are good uses of the technology.

OP has mentioned multiple times in this thread that he's not supportive of everything about today's version of the tech, so to tell him that there are terrible parts about it is preaching to the choir.

@foxyoreos
Meanwhile it is certainly possible to see ways, in well prescribed and clearly delineated circumstances, where the tech can be used for good. In my reading, that's everything he's been arguing.

To say that it's not possible at all because it's not possible today is being dishonest with yourself about the truth.

I didn't see anyone disagree with the statement that it's not possible today, so to argue that is a waste of everyone's time.

@foxyoreos
That's not my reading (more like, today's tech shows that something is possible even if we might prefer to do that with some tech that is similar in abilities but made in a different way), but I'm not him and I don't care enough to argue this further, so, meh 🤷