> There are many technologies that have seemed inevitable and seen retreats under the lack of commensurate business return (the supersonic jetliner)

I think this is a great analogy, not just to the current state of AI, but maybe even computers and the internet in general.

Supersonic transports must've seemed amazing, inevitable, and maybe even obvious to anyone alive at the time of their debut. But hiding under that amazing tech was a whole host of problems that were just not solvable with the technology of the era, let alone a profitable business model. I wonder if computers and the internet are following a similar trajectory to aerospace. Maybe we've basically peaked, and all that's left are optimizations around cost, efficiency, distribution, or convenience.

If you time traveled back to the 1970s and talked to most adults, they would have witnessed aerospace go from loud, smelly, and dangerous prop planes to the 707, 747 and Concorde. They would've witnessed the moon landings and were seeing the development of the Space Shuttle. I bet they would call you crazy if you told this person that 50 years later, in 2025, there would be no more supersonic commercial airliners, commercial aviation would basically look the same except more annoying, and also that we haven't been back to the moon. In the previous 50 years we went from the Wright Brothers to the 707! So maybe in 2075 we'll all be watching documentaries about LLMs (maybe even on our phones or laptops that look basically the same), and reminiscing about the mid-2020s and wondering why what seemed to be such a promising technology disappeared almost entirely.

I think this is both right and wrong. There was a good book that came out probably 15 years ago about how technology never stops in aggregate, but individual technologies tend to grow quickly and then stall. Airplane jets were one example in the book. The reason why I partially note this as wrong is that even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don't think LLMs share that characteristic today.

A better example, also in the book, are skyscrapers. Each year they grew and new ones were taller than the ones last year. The ability to build them and traverse them increased each year with new technologies to support it. There wasn't a general consensus around issues that would stop growth (except at more extremes like air pressure). But the growth did stop. No one even has expectations of taller skyscrapers any more.

LLMs may fail to advance, but not because of any consensus reason that exists today. And it maybe that they serve their purpose to build something on top of them which ends up being far more revolutionary than LLMs. This is more like the path of electricity -- electricity in itself isn't that exciting nowadays, but almost every piece of technology built uses it.

I fundamentally find it odd that people seem so against AI. I get the potential dystopian future, which I also don't want. But the more mundane annoyance seems odd to me.

From a system optimisation perspective, SSTs solved the wrong problem.

Want to save people time flying? Solve the grotesque inefficiency pit that is airport transit and check-in.

Like, I'm sorry, STILL no high speed, direct to terminal rail at JFK, LAX and a dozen other major international airports? And that's before we get to the absolute joke of "border security" and luggage check-in.

Sure, supersonic afterburning engines are dope. But it's like some 10GHz single-core CPU that pulls 1.2kW out of the wall. Like it or not, an iPhone 16 delivers far more compute utility in far more scenarios.

The crucial point is that we simply do not know yet if there is an inherent limitation in the reasoning capabilities of LLMs, and if so whether we are currently near to pushing up against them. It seems clear that American firms are still going to increase the amount of compute by a lot more (with projects like the Stargate factory), so time will tell if that is the only bottleneck to further progress. There might also still be methodological innovations that can push capabilities further.

Oh no, LLMs won't disappear but they will be a lot less loud.

Progress is often an S shaped curve and we are nearing saturation.

The problem with supersonic commercial jets was mainly one of marketing/politics. The so called "sonic boom" problem was vastly overhyped, as anyone who lives near an air force base can tell you.

The conspiracy theorist tells me the American aerospace manufacturers at the time (Boening, McDonnell-Douglas, etc.), did everything they could to kill the Concorde. With limited flyable routes (NYC and DC to Paris and London I think were the only ones), the financials didn't make sense. If overland routes were available, especially opening up LA, San Francisco and Chicago, it might have been a different story.

> So maybe in 2075 we'll all be watching documentaries about LLMs (maybe even on our phones or laptops that look basically the same), and reminiscing about the mid-2020s and wondering why what seemed to be such a promising technology disappeared almost entirely.

It's hard for me to believe that anyone who works with technology in general, and LLMs in particular, could think this.