It can’t even do it cheaply. The current API prices are far too low for inference providers to survive long term, because not only are they currently deep in the red on inference itself, the hardware this stuff runs on has a very limited lifetime of a few years, means you have to replace the most expensive parts the most (pretty much different than most things - normally the really cheap stuff has to be replaced regularily, which makes a lot more sense). These costs do not even include the massive bill for training new models, which they all have to do to make sure to not fall behind.
See the first point, in combination that many areas are not tolerant to high error rates - noone hires a lawyer that makes grave mistakes on the regular, and i refuse to see a doctor that messes up 20% of their diagnoses.
Anyone not jumping on the train will be safe when the inevitable moment comes where inference providers start raising prices massively to get into the black, everyone else will be shafted because of the loss of institutional knowledge due to laying off their human staff.
Because the tech is basically ready baked at this point and it only needs training to get up to date on recent events, I suspect the cheaper, possibly open models will be used for a lot of BS. You don’t need the latest vajillion dollar model to run customers through a loop of ‘How can I help you today? … Could you please tell me your account number? … Please wait while this input is processed by an open-source LLM on a raspberry pi CPU. … Can I interest you in signing up for our premium service to receive human support? … That’s okay. I’ll ask again later. … Could you please confirm your account details? … I’m sorry. I’m not authorized to solve your problem. Please visit the nearest branch office of our company, located conveniently one mile from the geomagnetic south pole and our one free tier customer service penguin will be happy to hear your complaint. Is there anything else I can help you with today?’
Doctors and lawyers are professionals with niche skills in reasoning and domain knowledge, not replaceable with an LLM. It takes no knowledge to give someone the runaround. If your goal is the pretense of customer service without actual service, you can run shitty models on shitty hardware to make it slow and even more unreliable, and just slap a disclaimer up front saying your company can’t be held responsible for what the LLM spits out. It won’t matter if it sucks when it cuts your payroll expenses and cranks your shareprice so hard that every competitor follows suit to get their bonuses up, or frees up so much cash you just buy out the competition given anti-trust laws are just ignored these days.
Never doubt the ability of a business schooler to make the world a worse place.
Business majors will find a way to make it worse.
Because the tech is basically ready baked at this point and it only needs training to get up to date on recent events, I suspect the cheaper, possibly open models will be used for a lot of BS. You don’t need the latest vajillion dollar model to run customers through a loop of ‘How can I help you today? … Could you please tell me your account number? … Please wait while this input is processed by an open-source LLM on a raspberry pi CPU. … Can I interest you in signing up for our premium service to receive human support? … That’s okay. I’ll ask again later. … Could you please confirm your account details? … I’m sorry. I’m not authorized to solve your problem. Please visit the nearest branch office of our company, located conveniently one mile from the geomagnetic south pole and our one free tier customer service penguin will be happy to hear your complaint. Is there anything else I can help you with today?’
Doctors and lawyers are professionals with niche skills in reasoning and domain knowledge, not replaceable with an LLM. It takes no knowledge to give someone the runaround. If your goal is the pretense of customer service without actual service, you can run shitty models on shitty hardware to make it slow and even more unreliable, and just slap a disclaimer up front saying your company can’t be held responsible for what the LLM spits out. It won’t matter if it sucks when it cuts your payroll expenses and cranks your shareprice so hard that every competitor follows suit to get their bonuses up, or frees up so much cash you just buy out the competition given anti-trust laws are just ignored these days.
Never doubt the ability of a business schooler to make the world a worse place.