Groupthink versus Tulips. What will historians think of 2024?
We recorded 8 claims from this post. 3 were checked against evidence. 5 can’t be checked. 2 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (8)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Strikingly, Meta is giving it away free, and the more deeply-trained version (still to come/still being trained) may well be in the general vicinity of GPT-4.”
What we tested: The more deeply-trained version of Meta's LLAMA-3, still being trained, may well be in the general vicinity of GPT-4.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
“That means, of course, that OpenAI’s business model is threatened; same for Anthropic’s, Mistral’s, and so on.”
What we tested: Meta's free near-GPT-4 model threatens the business models of OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and similar companies.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
“Whatever tiny moat there was between the companies will further diminish.”
What we tested: The small moat between LLM companies will further diminish.
Assessment: SupportedSaid
“LLMs are well on their way to becoming a commodity; price wars will be intense.”
What we tested: LLMs are becoming a commodity and price wars among providers will be intense.
What happened: Reuters reports Alibaba's steep cuts, Baidu making two models free hours later, and ByteDance's earlier aggressive pricing. This directly establishes competitive price cutting rather than merely cheaper computation; reputable reporting is used for the response sequence. (Reuters, republished by Yahoo Finance, )
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Meanwhile, and perhaps not coincidentally, the bubble deflation that I have been warning since August of has finally perhaps begun:”
What we tested: The AI bubble deflation may have begun as of April 2024.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“So 2024 could be remembered as the high point in a kind of tulip-mania.”
What we tested: 2024 could be remembered as the peak of an AI tulip-mania.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Historians are going to be scratching their heads.”
What we tested: Historians will be puzzled by the AI industry's groupthink.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
“Gary Marcus is shaking his head, but cautiously optimistic that an increase of realism might lead to a renaissance of new approaches to AI.”
What we tested: An increase in realism about AI might lead to a renaissance of new approaches to AI.
Held from this post (2)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: All the major AI companies are spending billions producing almost exactly the same results using almost exactly the same data and almost exactly the same technology, all flawed in almost exactly the same ways.
- The two reviews read the claim differently