After apocalyptic warnings about the the threats posed by AI, leaders like Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s calls to ‘slow the pace’
They’re all stating this to hide from the reality that llm development has nearly hit the upper limits of what these models can do. The hope was that big data would indefinitely sustain the progress of these models but we are seeing diminishing returns. They projected exponential returns back in 2020 but the reality is that these are hill curves. We’ll continue to see incremental progress with llms but academic AI progress will come from exploration of other novel techniques.
They’re all stating this to hide from the reality that llm development has nearly hit the upper limits of what these models can do. The hope was that big data would indefinitely sustain the progress of these models but we are seeing diminishing returns. They projected exponential returns back in 2020 but the reality is that these are hill curves. We’ll continue to see incremental progress with llms but academic AI progress will come from exploration of other novel techniques.
They’re also trying to use this as an excuse to strangle open weights models so they can maintain an oligarchy.