Seriously. People like to project forward based on how quickly this technological breakthrough came on the scene, but they don’t realize that, barring a few tweaks and improvements here and there, this is it for LLMs. It’s the limit of the technology.

It’s not to say AI can’t improve further, and I’m sure that when it does, it will skillfully integrate LLMs. And I also think artists are right to worry about the impact of AI on their fields. But I think it’s a total misunderstanding of the technology to think the current technology will soon become flawless. I’m willing to bet we’re currently seeing it at 95% of its ultimate capacity, and that we don’t need to worry about AI writing a Hollywood blockbuster any time soon.

In other words, the next step of evolution in the field of AI will require a revolution, not further improvements to existing systems.

In the 1980s, Racter was released and it was only slightly less impressive than current LLMs only because it didn’t have an Internet’s worth of data it was trained on, but it could still write things like:

Bill sings to Sarah. Sarah sings to Bill. Perhaps they will do other dangerous things together. They may eat lamb or stroke each other. They may chant of their difficulties and their happiness. They have love but they also have typewriters. That is interesting.

If anything, at least that’s more entertaining than what modern LLMs can output.

So is your brain.

Relative complexity matters a lot, even if the underlying mechanisms are similar.