Power to the people: How LLMs flip the script on technology diffusion
Original excerpt
Transformative technologies usually follow a top-down diffusion path: originating in government or military contexts, passing through corporations, and eventually reaching individuals - think electricity, cryptography, computers, flight, the internet, or GPS. This progression feels intuitive, new and powerful technologies are usually scarce, capital-intensive, and their use requires specialized technical expertise in the early stages.
So it strikes me as quite unique and remarkable that LLMs display a dramatic reversal of this pattern - they generate disproportionate benefit for regular people, while their impact is a lot more muted and lagging in corporations and governments. ChatGPT is the…
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