Ask HN: Will we see another home computer revolution (in the context of LLMs)?

3 points by picozeta 3 years ago | 6 comments

... or fat client era?

At the moment Chat-GPT and other instruct-based models show what's possible with modern LLM models. Although most SOTA models need cloud-compute to predict, it's feasible to assume that they might work on beefy standard desktops in the next 5 to 10 years (IMHO).

Now, historically we had:

  - thin-client main frame architecture (1970s - 1980s)
  - fat-client "home computers" (1980s - 2010s)
  - thin-client SaaS software platforms (2010s - 2025s)
  - fat-client LLM inference engines (2025s - ?)

In particular I think there will be a lot of ethical questions and legal work for companies to sell LLMs as SaaS, and because of fear to "recommend stuff against the status-quo", they might be inferior to "open" (unconstrained) models and that might be just possible for private persons (at first).

Just my 2 cents, what do you think?

brucethemoose2 3 years ago |

It may already be happening, by sheer coincidence. A leak suggests Intel is building remarkably wide, M1-like IGP for laptops: https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-arrow-lake-p-with-320eu-gp...

Which was in the pipe years before the LLM craze. Its reasonable to assume AMD is on a similar trajectory, making their future CPUs GPU/NPU heavy. Pair that with lots of RAM (and hopefully wider buses), and you have a respectable LLM client.

This might be a reasonable frontier for smartphone performance too, depending on how much DRAM continues to shrink. But maybe not, since mobile apps love their subscriptions and MTX, which rely on doing stuff in the cloud... otherwise why would you subscribe?

zamnos 3 years ago |

StableDiffusion, which isn't an LLM but is related, says that we could. Just like crypto mining drove GPU sales (for those interested in cryptocurrencies), those interested in private output of such systems are going to look to fat clients.

What am referring to with "private output"? I'm referring to what we know is coming - easy at-home production of porn deep fakes. Some aren't going to mind using AWS to produce their weird fantasies (not kink shaming, we're all into some weird stuff, not everyone is into their cloud provider potentially having access to it). Others are going to want that produced privately at home, on their own hardware.

detrites 3 years ago |

I hope so. But I'm not sure it would necessarily be driven by LLM's or AI explicitly so much as part of what may be natural cycling between opposing views on how to best mix society and technology. Thin = centralised power & thick = decentralised.

picozeta 3 years ago | |

Yes, I agree and if running decentralized/thick succeeds, it might be feasible to just have a "personal language inference engine" in your pocket (or first desktop), that might be useful even without internet access. Maybe the later is more a small delta that you upgrade weekly (news, opening hours, events, map updates, ...).

This will probably be popular in both the left-anarcho-liberal and right-wing parts of population (the first to oppose mega-corp capitalism the second to oppose governmental control and also mega-corp). But so it is agreed on by most parts of the population (maybe for different reasons), and might just become popular (again).

Interesting times ahead, that's for sure.

dtagames 3 years ago |

No. The large compute power these systems require and the desire to have them accessible everywhere makes them naturally live in the cloud. Folks used to run their own servers, email, etc and that's already gone.

shrimp_emoji 3 years ago | |

Eternal slavery to the corporations, accessing their stuff on their computers from our consoomer terminals :D

(At least we'll be able to complain about it on their platforms, as long as we keep it ad-friendly)