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simonw

I've been calling LLMs "electric bicycles for the mind", inspired by that Jobs quote.

- some bicycle purists consider electric bicycles to be "cheating"

- you get less exercise from an electric bicycle

- they can get you places really effectively!

- if you don't know how to ride a bicycle an electric bicycle is going to quickly lead you to an accident

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To keep torturing the metaphor, LLMs might be more like those electric unicycles (Onewheel, Inmotion, etc) – quite speedy, can get you places, less exercise, and also sometimes suddenly choke and send you flying facefirst into gravel.

And some people see you whizzing by and think "oh cool", and others see you whizzing by and think "what a tool."

More like the Segway... really cool at first then not really then totally overpriced and failed to revolutionize the industry. And it killed the founder

Is there a modern segway? I mean, I find ebikes are probably a better option in general, but it seems like all the pieces to recreate the segway for a much lower price are there already.

Looks like the closest thing is the self balancing stuff that segway makes. Otherwise it's just the scooters.

e-skateboards?

Just a small correction, the founder of Segway is Dean Kamen who is still alive. It was the then-owner of the company who died.

thanks saved me googling if Kamen was still alive!

It would have been cooler if this comment was by the founder :)

Oh boy do I wish I was nearly as cool as Dean Kamen. :)

Maybe more like a fatbike for the mind: pretending to cycle with zero effort and exercise.

Also: you can ride 8 of them, slowly, asynchronously.

Not sure how this fits in the analogy, but as a cyclist I would add some people get more exercise by having an electric bicycle. It makes exercise available to more people.

I think that fits it really well.

Motorcycle might be more apt

I like this analogy. I'll add that, while electric bicycles are great for your daily commute, they're not suited for the extremes of biking (at least not yet).

- You're not going to take an electric bike mountain biking

- You're not going to use an electric bike to do BMX

- You're not going to use an electric bike to go bikepacking across the country

I think you're kind of missing the point discussing which vehicle compares better to LLMs. The point is not the vehicle: it's the birth of the engine. Before engines, humans didn't have the means to produce those amounts of power- at all. No matter how many people, horses or oxen they had at their disposal.

I don't think they're missing the point. I think there's still fundamental disagreements about the functional utility of LLMs.

Actually, electric mountain bikes are popular (where they're allowed), mostly because they make ascents so easy.

People have definitely used ebikes for bikepacking as well. Not sure about BMX.

They’re great when the trails aren’t too technical. No so much when they are (as I’ve learned from personal experience )

I'm curious what your personal experience is.

My eMTBs are just as capable as my manual bikes (similar geometry, suspension, etc). In fact, they make smashing tech trails easier because there's more weight near the bottom bracket which adds a lot of stability.

The ride feel is totally different though. I tend to gap more sections on my manual bike whereas I end up plowing through stuff on the hefty eeb.

> You're not going to use an electric bike to do BMX

while there are companies that have made electric BMX bikes, i'd argue that if you're doing actual "BMX" on a motorized bike, it's just "MX" at that point :)

Whistlerite here. My Strava stats for last year suggest half and half eMTB and road riding. Tiny bit of fully self-powered MTB work.

As a 56-year old, eBikes are what make mountain biking possible and fun for me.

E-bikes keep people out riding for more hours.

Cooldown capability, and no fear of outriding your energy.

>- You're not going to take an electric bike mountain biking

this sounds like a direct quote from Femke Van Den Driessche, who actually took an electric bike mountain biking: big mistake. Did it not perform well? no, actually it performed really well, the problem was, it got her banned from bike racing. Some of the evidence was her passing everybody else on the uphills; the other evidence was a motorized bike in her pit area.

> they can get you places really effectively!

But those who require them to get anywhere won't get very far without power.

Moped for the mind has a nice ring to it

I feel like both moped and electric bike misses the mark of the initial analogy, so does tractor too. Because they're not able to get good results without someone putting in the work ("energy") at some higher part of the process. It's not "at the push of a button/twist of the wrist" like with electric bikes or mopeds, but being able to know where/how to push actually gets you reliable results. Like a bicycle.

Yeah, but plenty of people are just getting bad results and keeping them, because they'd prefer bad results for free over good results with effort.

Most people I see on their electric bikes aren't even pedaling. They're electric motorcycles, and they're a plague to everyone using pedestrian trails. Some of them are going nearly highway speeds, it's ridiculous.

There are 3 classes of e-bikes in the US, with class 3 topping out at 28mph—anything above that is illegal or in some weird legal grey area. You are thinking of e-motos which are an entirely different beast.

e-motos are a real problem; please don’t lump legitimate e-bikes in with those. It’s simply incorrect.

as someone who bikes every day, they're both a problem.

Nope. You apparently are incapable of distinguishing the massive gulf between an e-bike that enables the elderly, differently-abled, commuters, and less fit people to enjoy cycling at reasonable speeds. And an e-moto which is an illegally souped up vehicle that can reach closer to highway speeds. The latter is indeed a danger and should not be used in bike lanes or multi use paths… or really at all.

E-biking is only gaining popularity, so I’d suggest you educate yourself and adjust your ignorant perspective rather than digging in :)

and other sometimes you forgot to charge it, becoming even heavier thing to continue your journey with. or, there is a high grade slope where excess weight is more than the motor capacity

You probably can’t repair it yourself either.

> I've been calling LLMs "electric bicycles for the mind",

Ridden by a pelican perchance?

- they still fall over if nobody's holding the bars

Slamming the brakes and going teeth first into the handlebars.

okay -- how about motorcycles for the mind then? :)

most people don't know how to harness their full potential

Not convinced with any of three analogies tbh they don’t quite capture what is going on like Steve jobs’ did.

And frankly all of this is really missing the point - instead of wasting time on analogies we should look at where this stuff works and then reason from there - a general way to make sense of it that is closer to reality.

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