Thinking about all the AI models companies like Google, Meta and others have made available for free it seems to me that is part of the game. For most training some of the big models (not just LLMs) is impossible due to both lack of enough data and processing resources. But here freebies had made a lot of difference as fine tuning of such available models is achievable for many. Either way there are free LLMs available today too, and I hope they will keep improving as well.
I think that the commercial big ones will likely always be better. But all LLMs keep improving, while the difficulty of programming stay fairly constant if not easier. Thus my hope is that at some point local LLMs will make production quality code. Then I will ask myself if paying a service to do even better quality or faster is really worth it. Good enough is good enough at some point.
I don’t know. At some level this huge LLMs providers in the sky remind me of laser printing services. Great businesses until the prices and quality was such that every office just got their own laser printer instead. I think LLMs for programming might be temporary. Will we still be doing it like we are now in 5 to 10 years? I’m not so sure.
