Ask HN: How can ChatGPT serve 700M users when I can't run one GPT-4 locally?

In the immediate aftermath of GPT 3.5 and the LlaMA leak, Github Copilot, there was a lot of denial (negative sentiment, barely concealed rejection etc) about the world we were being ushered into.

Then there was a lot of movement by governments and pressure groups to legislate.

Post GPT-5, Grok4 et al, have we ridden the crest and gotten to the other side now?

Comments (4)

not_your_vase · 8h ago

I think the divide just got stronger, at least when I look at my, and my circle's sentiment, I feel that most of the original sentiments just got stronger.

Personally I have had very high hopes 3 years ago in some areas, that it would really make life better. But personally all I see is unmaintainable software (which is at least fast to write), still all the old bugs are present, vast majority of my programming and other technical questions get an obviously wrong answer from copilot, we have lots of fake pictures, disabled search engines, and weird generated porn videos.

Last week I tried an AI language learning service (YC backed), with a language that I speak at low-intermediate level, but want to level up. In the first 10 minutes I got 2 incorrect grammatical corrections - and that was my smallest problem with the service.

I don't have high hopes anymore. But also, I feel my career just as safe as I did during the lockdown.

javier123454321 · 8h ago

As a person that leans skeptic on any over hyping about LLMs, and felt like it was being pushed on me. I wanted it to help my flow for the first 2-3 years after ChatGPT/Copilot came out, and I gave it a few honest go's. I simply found it cumbersome and probably a net negative in terms of output. That was until my most recent one a month or two ago, while using CLI agents did I find LLMs to actually be a net positive to my productivity. I especially have found them useful for building little tools to improve my workflows and shave seconds that lead to minutes, that lead to hours saved over time. So anecdotally, I am thinking that yes, I am going more into the acceptance phase. Then the adage of "this is the worse it will ever be" is also haunting the back of my conscience.

JohnFen · 6h ago

No, I don't think so. If anything, I think people are getting more wary of it than before. There's also an increasing amount of irritation about it being force-fed everywhere.

kirito1337 · 8h ago

Not yet, for a ton of reasons, for one most people don't know what an AI is and they think it's some kind of super intelligence, and people won't accept what they can't understand.