I find it hard to believe people who have hardware that can run LLMs are so easily deterred. The whole point of investing the money is to do whatever you want

Everybody with a silicon Mac can easily run a small parameter LLM. Smartphones can run small ones too. Plenty of windows machines are capable too.

We know with populations of a certain size, any barrier is going to cause people to drop off. We see it over and over again. Why is this going to be any different? The more technical it feels, the more impenetrable it feels, so people will simply turn to ChatGPT or anthropic or whoever and pay them a subscription. Is that what we want? Like what are you even arguing with me about?

this is a thread about reverse engineering, to my knowledge small parameter LLMs are not going to give you much help with this. who cares about novelty LLMs?

> We know with populations of a certain size, any barrier is going to cause people to drop off

but the population size of people who will self host is not large.

> The more technical it feels, the more impenetrable it feels

you have to be inherently technical to even consider the option to run locally no matter how easy. what would a non technical person even use a local LLM for, that they wouldn't want to do with CGPT or ANT?

also, even considering reverse engineering any software at all requires technical knowledge. 99% of lay people don't even know it's an option let alone start vibe coding a RE on a local LLM

When has lack of domain knowledge stopped people when it comes to LLM’s? Besides I know I often learn how to do things by just throwing myself at it and brute forcing it until I start to gain understanding. A lot of us learn by doing, even if it’s something we have no business doing in the first place.

A lot of people also work on projects because they want people to use it. If the number of people utilizing different peoples takes on models drops, than people are going to lose interest in making them for other people. We all like to point to the altruism of the open source world, but nobody likes to release something only for no people to use it. That’s a very natural feeling that leads to people not releasing things because they’re too niche and such.

Anyway I’m just moving on. I don’t understand how I’m having to defend “increased barriers to entry dissuades people from participation and creation.” Some of y’all don’t think it’s a big deal or it’s somehow not applicable, but I can’t say I agree

It would be harder for a short period of time. Then it will be made easy again. As a baseline, it's not going to get harder than pirating a movie unless it's made criminal.

what sense does that make? Why would it suddenly get easier?

I didn't say suddenly. Do you think no one would try to develop a replacement?

Please don’t get hung up on my word choice. The point is this: I don’t understand why you think that it’s a given that adoption would occur at a meaningful level. We have it right now. Why would we give that up for the promise that we’ll get to again? It makes no sense. We should not want access to be eroded over time and then cope with “well we’ll get an alternative.” That’s not a given!

It’s not going to stop with hugging face just like ID requirements aren’t stopping at pornography. It is much harder to regain these things once they are lost.