I think this is a great analogy, not just to the current state of AI, but maybe even computers and the internet in general.
Supersonic transports must've seemed amazing, inevitable, and maybe even obvious to anyone alive at the time of their debut. But hiding under that amazing tech was a whole host of problems that were just not solvable with the technology of the era, let alone a profitable business model. I wonder if computers and the internet are following a similar trajectory to aerospace. Maybe we've basically peaked, and all that's left are optimizations around cost, efficiency, distribution, or convenience.
If you time traveled back to the 1970s and talked to most adults, they would have witnessed aerospace go from loud, smelly, and dangerous prop planes to the 707, 747 and Concorde. They would've witnessed the moon landings and were seeing the development of the Space Shuttle. I bet they would call you crazy if you told this person that 50 years later, in 2025, there would be no more supersonic commercial airliners, commercial aviation would basically look the same except more annoying, and also that we haven't been back to the moon. In the previous 50 years we went from the Wright Brothers to the 707! So maybe in 2075 we'll all be watching documentaries about LLMs (maybe even on our phones or laptops that look basically the same), and reminiscing about the mid-2020s and wondering why what seemed to be such a promising technology disappeared almost entirely.
A better example, also in the book, are skyscrapers. Each year they grew and new ones were taller than the ones last year. The ability to build them and traverse them increased each year with new technologies to support it. There wasn't a general consensus around issues that would stop growth (except at more extremes like air pressure). But the growth did stop. No one even has expectations of taller skyscrapers any more.
LLMs may fail to advance, but not because of any consensus reason that exists today. And it maybe that they serve their purpose to build something on top of them which ends up being far more revolutionary than LLMs. This is more like the path of electricity -- electricity in itself isn't that exciting nowadays, but almost every piece of technology built uses it.
I fundamentally find it odd that people seem so against AI. I get the potential dystopian future, which I also don't want. But the more mundane annoyance seems odd to me.
I think they pretty strongly do
The solution seems to be "just lower your standards for acceptable margin of error to whatever the LLM is capable of producing" which should be concerning and absolutely unacceptable to anyone calling themselves an Engineer
Isn’t that exactly what engineers do? Even very strong bridges aren’t designed to survive every possible eventuality.
The fundamental problem has already been mentioned: Nobody can figure out how to SELL it. Because few people are buying it.
It's useful for aggregation and summarization of large amounts of text, but it's not trustworthy. A good summary decreases noise and amplifies signal. LLMs don't do that. Without the capability to validate the output, it's not really generating output of lasting value. It's just a slightly better search engine.
It feels like, fundamentally, the primary invention here is teaching computers that it's okay to be wrong as long as you're convincing. That's very useful for propaganda or less savory aspects of business, but it's less useful for actual communication.
Just picking one company who basically just does AI, OpenAI. They reported it has 20 million PAID subscribers to ChatGPT. With revenue projected above $12b dollars (https://www.theverge.com/openai/640894/chatgpt-has-hit-20-mi...).
I think what you meant to say is that costs are high so they can't generate large profits. but saying that they can't figure out how to sell it seems absurd. Is it Netflix level of subscribers, no. But there can't be more than a couple of hundred products that have that type of subscription reach.
I hate to dogpile on this statement but I can think of two major issues right now:
* Small context windows, and serious degradation when pushing the limits of existing context windows. A human can add large amounts of state to their "context window" every day.
* Realtime learning. My humans get smarter every day, especially in the context of working with a specific codebase.
Maybe the AI companies will figure this out, but they are not "same technique more processor power" kinds of problems.
I don't see any solution to hallucinations, nor do I see any solution in sight. I think that could count as a concrete issue that would stop them.
- They were loud (sonic booms were nasty).
- They were expensive to maintain and operate. Guzzlers. (Britain and France clung to them as a matter of pride/ego)
- They were narrow and uncomfortable. I have seen videos where there is space only for one stewardess to walk. I had been inside of one in Seattle museum. Very cramped.
- As you mentioned, ticket cost was high.
- I suspect people traveled in these mostly for bragging rights.Contrast that with modern widebody jets, which fly ~300 people plus paid cargo on much more fuel-efficient engines.
Want to save people time flying? Solve the grotesque inefficiency pit that is airport transit and check-in.
Like, I'm sorry, STILL no high speed, direct to terminal rail at JFK, LAX and a dozen other major international airports? And that's before we get to the absolute joke of "border security" and luggage check-in.
Sure, supersonic afterburning engines are dope. But it's like some 10GHz single-core CPU that pulls 1.2kW out of the wall. Like it or not, an iPhone 16 delivers far more compute utility in far more scenarios.
Like an org with crappy management and team structure shipping bloated, buggy code even though they've the budget to hire great engineers and the problems they're solving are largely known and well-trodden.
https://nypost.com/2025/05/27/lifestyle/airports-are-removin...
It's hard for me to believe that anyone who works with technology in general, and LLMs in particular, could think this.
But sure if you exclusively look at the one field that has been advancing until about now I can see how one would end up where you are.
But this is exactly right, we are incrementally moving into the lamest cyberpunk future one can imagine, and we have been for some time.
Progress is often an S shaped curve and we are nearing saturation.
its actually kind of scary to think of a world where generative AI in the cloud goes away due to costs, in favor of some other lesser chimera version that can't currently be predicted
but good news is that locally run generative AI is still getting better and better with fewer and fewer resources consumed to use
The conspiracy theorist tells me the American aerospace manufacturers at the time (Boening, McDonnell-Douglas, etc.), did everything they could to kill the Concorde. With limited flyable routes (NYC and DC to Paris and London I think were the only ones), the financials didn't make sense. If overland routes were available, especially opening up LA, San Francisco and Chicago, it might have been a different story.
In the US, the Air Force is simply not allowed to fly supersonic anywhere near a city or a suburb with only a few exceptions.
One exception is Edwards Air Force Base in the California desert: there are houses nearby, but the base (and supersonic warplanes) preceded the construction of the homes, so the reasoning is that the home builders and home buyers knew what they were buying into.
Another exception (quoting Google Gemini):
>From 1964 to 1966, the FAA and U.S. Air Force conducted supersonic flights over St. Louis and other cities like Oklahoma City to gauge public reaction to daily sonic booms. The goal was to understand public tolerance for commercial supersonic transport (SST) operations. Reactions in St. Louis, as elsewhere, were largely negative, contributing to the eventual ban on commercial supersonic flight over land in the U.S.
Have you have experienced sonic booms? I have (when my family visited West Germany in 1970) and I certainly would not want to be subjected to them regularly.
The pilots don't shit where they eat. Ask some farmer a bit further away how many sheep die a year from panic instead.