Laughing At The Past

Laughing At The Past

        Each generation thinks they are cool, hip, and in the know. Everyone thinks they know what is amazing and what is not. We do not. Time has a way of laughing at us. History can be hysterical, as time has shown throughout history.

At one point in time, people who performed mathematical calculations were called computers. In the 70s, no one could imagine a reason for a typical household to have a microcomputer. The sole rationale for having a computer in the 70s was to catalog your recipes from the engineers' point of view. A person who computes is no longer called a computer. Today, only some have written recipes they catalog. If they do, they are typed in a text file that could be searched without thought. History has shown us that understanding the future and emerging technologies is like reading tea leaves in a cup of water. No one knows what future technologies can bring. And they cannot predict what the future will bring.

Today, the buzzword in technology is artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLM). Most have heard this new technology will ruin education and take away jobs. Perhaps large language models will lead to the destruction of the world. However, few in the population understand how large language models function. Large language models are not some amazing technology that is not understandable. Even looking at the words for LLM can help you understand how this technology works.

Large, hundreds of billions of parameters capture a vast amount of information from the data on which they are trained. Language, the model operates based on working with text and understanding the nuances of human language. Models are algorithms trained to perform various natural language processing tasks.

This may still be challenging to understand. However, large language models are as groundbreaking as the microcomputers in the home in the 1970s and the internet in the 1990s. Predicting all the applications that large language models will influence is not possible. The past has shown this. But it is fun to try.

Do not be afraid of large language models. It is a tool like a computer or the internet. You can learn how to use this tool and be more productive. Will jobs change due to large language models? Yes. But technology has always affected jobs going back to the wheel or pulleys. Simple machines change the world, and so will large language models. Education will adapt to large language models, such as teaching imbraced computers and the internet.

It will be amazing to see the future of large language models. Our lives will improve in ways that you may not notice. So, go out there and learn about large language models. What you understand, you do not fear.

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