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Any half decent system (including phone CPUs) with 64Gb of RAM can do 98% of the actually useful things that LLMs do. Why do you think they’ve bent over backwards to sign bullshit contracts that pretend to tie up the world’s RAM supply?

This is the one conspiracy theory I’ll subscribe to. AI companies and companies deeply dependent on AI (like NVIDIA) recognised that their USP was months away from being entirely doable on local devices, and acted to fuck the global supply chain.

I’ve spent 30 years writing about the games biz, which has fended off countless waves of hucksters and bullshit artists, but none quite as awful as the AI bros selling a future where we’ll all consume slop through a hose with no human creativity on the other end. But like every other bullshit trend…

bullshit trend, it’s ultimately going to enrich a handful of early movers who convinced gullible idiots in boardrooms to buy in. I’m not an LLM refusenik. I use it every day; it’s a great new technical advancement. If you laid off a single worker thinking AI can replace them, you’re a fuckwit.

These models will fundamentally change how we interact with computers. That’s wonderful! But a new paradigm in computer interfaces isn’t a machine god, let alone a global economic upset. And everything OpenAI claims to do will ultimately run on your wristwatch.