Next token prediction

We are entering the third era of information technology where even my parents are talking about AI and how it will impact society! This moment feels a lot like one I experienced over three decades ago, when the internet and the World Wide Web were starting to become a 'thing'.

Back then there was the same spectrum of opinion that I hear today about AI, in terms of how large of a bang, or how small of a fizzle this new-fangled 'tech' would have on society and our daily lives.

I believe I'm on rock solid ground when I say that the internet changed EVERYTHING! Not only did it change, it disrupted, it flipped whole industries on their heads, yet it was also the birth place of hundreds of new business types that just didn't (and many couldn't) exist prior to the Internet's arrival. The Internet era fundamentally changed the world.

When I had the realisation back in 2022 that we were at the cusp of yet another technology instigated revolution, I just couldn't believe it. Specifically I couldn't believe the rate of change and that in fact, during my lifetime (which is far from done yet - I hope!) I will have experienced at least two, maybe even three technology instigated revolutions.

Many years ago, I distinctly remember overhearing a conversation between two people which went something like this; "...have you used the internet yet?.....yes, but I just don't see much use for it, they say we'll all being using it before long, but I just don't see it catching on....."

Has anyone not tried ChatGPT at this point?

I hear more often than not, more or less the same comment, "yeah I tried it....but...." Now there's a whole range of things that follow the 'but' depending on who you talk to.

The non-technically minded people generally struggle with how the 'chatbot' they just engaged in a conversation with can be extrapolated into the super-intelligence that cures all human illness, develops net new science, solves the challenge of generating unlimited carbon free energy and also eliminates all jobs for humans.

I can't blame them either, as unless you can join the all the dots yourself, the jump from a 'semi-acurate, sometimes hallucinogenic fake human' to Artificial General Intelligence and thus the (risk of) ending humanity is just far to big a leap to make.

How does a chatbot solve climate change anyway?

For those more technically minded who can join the dots, how AI will impact the future is often clouded by philosophical questions, such as "can we really call it intelligence?", or "it can't be dangerous because it will never be conscious, or have feelings or intent", etc.

Even the most basic argument of 'an LLM is just a next token prediction engine' is something I hear all the time as a reason to ignore it or doubt its potential impact.

So where should we sit on all these differing opinions?

Will AI disrupt like the Internet did? Will it catch on like the Internet did? Will it ruin some businesses and industries but create entirely new ones like the Internet did??

Take a look at the photograph at the top of this article. It has no attribution because it was not a stock photo I found on the internet, it was not taken by someone else, it was taken by me and only ever seen by me.

I showed this photo to an LLM and asked it to describe what it saw. Here's the un-edited response:

"In the picture, a group of people is gathered around a long dining table in a dimly-lit restaurant. They appear to be engaged in various conversations with wine glasses and water bottles on the table, indicating a social or celebrative occasion. The ambiance suggests an evening setting, and there is a festive wreath hanging on the window, hinting at a holiday season. The view outside the window is dark, and the interior lighting casts a warm glow on the diners."

Not too shabby for a next token prediction engine I think.

I'm sure many of you have seen the many other publicly available examples of such demonstrations of AI. There are so many other contextual examples of what these 'simple next token prediction engines' can already do today, I'd need another ten pages to even begin talking you through those other examples.

Just trust me for now, if you've not seen (or looked into) what these things are capable of today, you should, your mind will be blown.

So will the Era of AI be as big and disruptive as the Internet was? No. It will be by far bigger. Likely bigger than almost all of us can imagine, except perhaps those insiders who are building our AI future.

It's such an exciting time, yes, I'll admit, a tiny bit scary, but then change is.

Even in my little corner of the technology industry I'm starting to see everything change, after more or less 20yrs of of Information Technology staying pretty much the same (x86 compute, megabit to gigabit networks, 5-10kW average rack density and the 'blow cold air and hope' data center cooling strategy).

Don't be fooled by the apparent simplicity at the LLM's core, don't be complacent because you can't yet see the path between next token prediction and the uncovering of all human protein structures, don't wait for someone else to tell you what will happen and how to respond to the change ahead.

Like anything in life, the more you know, the more you can educate yourself, the better prepared you are for what lies ahead.

And what lies ahead is not just a predictable next token but a wave of new capability that for the first time will challenge everything you thought you knew about everything else.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading these humanly predicted next tokens.

NOTE: these tokens were generated solely by the grey biological matter housed within the human known as Zahl (German for number by the way) and do not represent the tokens already generated or that may be generated in the future by the legal token generating entity known as my employer.