AI Reality Check: Are LLMs a Dead End?

0:00We've been told time and again that the massive large language models trained by companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are poised to utterly transform our world.

0:11We've been told that huge percentages of existing jobs are soon to be automated.

0:16We've been told that skills like writing and photography and filmmaking are all about to be outsourced.

0:22And we've been told if we're not careful, the systems built on these models might someday soon become sentient and even threaten the existence of the human race.

0:33But here's the thing.

0:35One of the AI pioneers who helped usher in this current age is not convinced.

0:41His name is Jan Lacun, and he's been long arguing that not only will LLM-based AI fail to deliver all of these disruptions, but that it is, and I'm quoting him here, a technological dead end.

0:56People have started to listen.

0:59Earlier this month, a syndicate of investors, including Jeff Bezos and Mark Cubin, along with a bunch of different VC firms, raised over a billion dollars to fund Lacun's new startup, Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs, which seeks to build an alternative path to true AI, one that avoids LLMs altogether.