[frankohn]

An airplane is far less energy-efficient than a bird to fly, to such an extent that it is almost pathetic. Nevertheless, the airplane is a highly useful technology, despite its dismal energy efficiency. On the other hand, it would be very difficult to scale a bird-like device to transport heavy weights or hundreds of people.

I think current LLMs may scale the same way and become very powerful, even if not as energy-efficient as an animal's brain.

In practice, we humans, when we have a technology that is good enough to be generally useful, tend to adopt it as it is. We scale it to fit our needs and perfect it while retaining the original architecture.

This is what happened with cars. Once we had the thermal engine, a battery capable of starting the engine, and tires, the whole industry called it "done" and simply kept this technology despite its shortcomings. The industry invested heavily to scale and mass-produce things that work and people want.