Imagine being able to program every machine by just telling it what you need. For example, even toasters can have LLMs in them. Give it ability to control temperature and humidity and you have the perfect toaster machine that can toast everyones bread upon request. Maybe every machine in the future will have AI in it that will act both as a controller and UI. Any specialised industry getting wiped out. Doing home security? No more specialised applications or implementation, just tell the door whom should it let in.
And LLMs are just one way of doing computer intelligence.
The way software ate the world, AI will eventually eat software.
> For example, even toasters can have LLMs in them. Give it ability to control temperature and humidity and you have the perfect toaster machine that can toast everyones bread upon request.
My toaster has a little dial on the side that lets me do that already. I don't need to have a conversation with my toaster to get it to toast the bread, I just put the bread in it, push the lever down, and then toast happens.
That’s because you don’t know better toasts. That dial controls just one parameter and in my experience they suck at consistency between a warm batch and cold batch.
To make you amazing toasts, of course. Have you heard of the most expensive toaster? It’s a Mitsubishi toaster that can cook your toast just right.
In the future, all toasters will be able make great toast when practically all devices come with the same control board, something similar to raspberry pi but with ability to run LLMs and the toaster makers will simply connect the heating elements and sensors without needing to understand computers and the AI will control that toaster to cook just right.
> Have you heard of the most expensive toaster? It’s a Mitsubishi toaster that can cook your toast just right.
That's my point. It does that without a language model. Not only is perfect toast a solved problem, but slathering on a layer of LLM bullshit isn't going to make it more affordable than the Mitsubishi.
My point is that it can be possible to bring down all kind of electronics control unit into single standard component. The toaster and your dishwasher can have the exact same electronics since they wouldn’t need specialized computer that needs to have specialized software and wouldn’t need specialized engineering to make the software work with the hardware. Just connect the sensors and the other hardware like the heating unit to the AI board and tell it what it is and tell it to act like a toaster.
I'd still rather not introduce non-determinism into the mix. A toaster should be consistent in executing its expected function[1] and also not prone to hallucinations.
1: even if this means the operator needs experience and expertise from trial and error to know if it's cold, already hot, if we're putting bagels in, etc.
Imagine being able to program every machine by just telling it what you need. For example, even toasters can have LLMs in them. Give it ability to control temperature and humidity and you have the perfect toaster machine that can toast everyones bread upon request. Maybe every machine in the future will have AI in it that will act both as a controller and UI. Any specialised industry getting wiped out. Doing home security? No more specialised applications or implementation, just tell the door whom should it let in.
And LLMs are just one way of doing computer intelligence.
The way software ate the world, AI will eventually eat software.