[snek_case]

In the early 2000s Wikipedia used to fill that role. Now it's like you have an encyclopedia that you can talk to.

What I'm slightly worried about is that eventually they are going to want to monetize LLMs more and more, and it's not going to be good, because they have the ability to steer the conversation towards trying to get you to buy stuff.

[pmarreck]

> they are going to want to monetize LLMs more and more

Not only can you run reasonably intelligent models on recent relatively powerful PC's "for free", but advances are undoubtedly coming that will increase the efficient use of memory and CPU in these things- this is all still early-days

Also, some of those models are "uncensored"

[vjk800]

Can you? I imagine e.g. Google is using material not available to the public to train their models (unsencored Google books, etc.). Also, the chat bots, like Gemini, are not just pure LLMs anymore, but they also utilize other tools as part of their computation. I've asked Gemini computationally heavy questions and it successfully invokes Python scripts to answer them. I imagine it can also use other tools than Python, some of which might not even be publicly known.

I'm not sure what the situation is currently, but I can easily see private data and private resources leading to much better AI tools, which can not be matched by open source solutions.

[OGEnthusiast]

How do you verify the models you download also aren't trying to get you to buy stuff?

[ReedorReed]

Which free models do you recommend?

[Klaster_1]

One of the approaches to this that I haven't seen being talked about on HN at all is LLM as public infrastructure by the government. I think EU can pull this off. This also addresses overall alignment and compute-poverty issue. I wouldn't mind if my taxes paid for that instead of a ChatGPT subscription.

[Nevermark]

This is not a good idea at all.

Government should not be in a position to directly and pervasively shape people’s understanding of the world.

That would be the infinite regress opposite of a free (in a completely different sense) press.

A non-profit providing an open data and training regime for an open WikiBrain would be nice. With standard pricing for scaled up use.

[xvokcarts]

That's because a government-run LLM would be like government-run media.

High inflation? No, the government LLM will tell us we're doing great.

[attila-lendvai]

this assumes that "the government" is "us" and not "them"...

[michaelbrave]

I sort of already had an experience where it did kinda. I was consulting with it potential fashion choices to upgrade my work uniform, to look professional but still creative, basically to look more like a creative director. It recommended brands, colors, styles etc. Then I was asking about eyeglass frames showed it three pictures, described my facial features and it was like "you have to buy this one now" more enthusiastic than expected. It wasn't ads or anything but there was a bit of salesyness in there.

[attila-lendvai]

or more generally than just ads: make you believe stuff that makes you act in ways that is detrimental to you, but benefitial to them (whoever sits in the center and can control and shape the LLM).

i.e. the Nudge Unit on steroids...

care must be taken to avoid that.

[anon_anon12]

I can envision this as being in the boots of Truman from Truman Show where some advertisement is thrown at your face randomly

[idiotsecant]

It's also inevitable that better and better open source models will be distilled as frontier models advance.

[snek_case]

I agree. I think the local models you can run on the "average computer" are not quite good enough yet, but I have hope that we will see much better small local models in the future.

[resonious]

Right, this is what happened with search engines. And "SEO for LLMs" is already a thing.

[deadbabe]

Enshittification is always inevitable in a capitalist world, but not always easy to predict how it will happen.