Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

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ChrisMarshallNY

I'm of the opinion that the market will need to expand, horizontally. That's what's happening, with low-cost LLMs. I already know lots of "regular folks" that are totally hooked on LLMs (mostly ChatGPT, at the "regular mensch" level). They usually use the free tier, but a lot of them are doing the $20/month Pro tier.

If anyone is in my age group, they remember when ATMs were free. It was the "heroin dealer" business model. It worked out well (for the banks). The Chinese did it with manufacturing.

Getting people hooked on subsidized junk, is an age-old (and highly effective) business model.

Think of all the shops that will soon be composed of people that simply can't even get out of bed, if their LLM is not available. If the LLM dealer starts raising the price, there's no choice. I suspect many of the valuations are taking this into account.

> "Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy."

-William Burroughs

> Think of all the shops that will soon be composed of people that simply can't even get out of bed, if their LLM is not available.

I'm biased because I don't use AI, but I don't understand why you wouldn't fire these LLM-addicted people and replace them with people who can code or write an email without the use of an AI assistant.

They won't. They'll just pay more for the LLM.

I use LLMs all the time, but I'm also a highly capable and experienced engineer that can definitely work without. I have just found that the LLM is a force multiplier, like I haven't had before.

Same, though the types of jobs I’m working on now require the speed I get from LLMs. If I had to take my current projects and switch to hand-coding I’d have to extend the timelines and practically add a zero to the price.

If you don't mind sharing, what types of jobs are you working on now?

I haven't personally seen a speed boost from LLMs, but my experience with them suggests that they could be effective in some domains and inadequate in others. E.G., I have observed that LLM tools are inadequate for generating C++ code.

Sure, it's a real mix. Most recently:

- An electrical component "synthesizer" which takes natural language specifications in (e.g. from an RFQ) and uses material data sheets and core physics calculations to design new components. (Python)

- A transcript processing pipeline which reads what happened on a call, identifies participants from the CRM, drafts structured call notes, and posts them to the CRM with the proper associations after a human-in-the-loop confirmation. Fairly complex server & web app. (Go)

- Interaction design prototypes for a family of smart devices, some with screens. Brought together as an interactive web app to see how each device behaves (vanilla JS). Each prototype generated with the help of an LLM, including 3D animated examples (Claude driving Blender).

I’m writing Swift (native iOS apps), with PHP backends.

I have found it does good PHP code, and Swift code that definitely needs adult supervision.

Also, very good for things like code documentation, debugging, and writing copy for things.

LLMs are rapidly becoming commodities with open weight and Chinese models. Frontier providers won't be able to raise prices forever, indeed we already see evidence of decreased prices from such competition.

And ATMs can be free still, if you use a bank that refunds all worldwide ATM fees, such as Charles Schwab.

The commodity is not in the LLM but the tokens.

Anthropic's offerings are vertically differentiated. However from an economical stand point, it also be true that they are not the preferred option for many.

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