This was great, Andy. Can you talk about any trade offs we make to apply this kind of solution?
It’d be a big deal to design better infrastructure for pedestrians in public spaces and privately owned ones, too! I’m thinking about big box stores that have designed parking lots for customers to drive into, but have been less thoughtful about how you get to the front door. Do I really have to risk my life walking through the Target parking lot to buy some TP? 😂
No, LLMs cannot do the things you are claiming they can do. Algorithms built specifically for those purposes might be able to (and frankly I assume there are already people working on them), but a text generation tool cannot. And this is not just pedantry -- when you make claims like this you contribute to the hype machine rather than to actual possible areas where measured applications of technology can be useful. Convincing stakeholders to spend time and money on OpenAI LLM, for example, rather than another more useful algorithm/expertise is the equivalent of hiring the Boring company to control your mass transit rather than just, you know, buying some busses.
But at the end of the day, there are no technological magic bullets. Even if you had an algorithm that did all these things (and, again, I would be surprised is much of this did not already exist in some form or fashion), it doesn't do any good if there is no political will to implement it. That is what I think most people mean when they say there is no technological solution -- too many people think some magic bullet is going to come along and sole what is at the end a political problem and thus spend too much time in the hype cycle and not enough time in the organization trenches.
Not accusing you of that, mind you, just making a general comment on what I see as the state of the conversation generally.
The prioritization of cars over people in the application of technology is what can (and unfortunately does) make tech the enemy of active transportation. You cover this very well, but it truly seems that capitalism, fossil fuel industry, and auto lobbyists are going to have their way when it comes to funding and application of technology and it will be at the expense of vulnerable road users. Same as it ever was.
This was great, Andy. Can you talk about any trade offs we make to apply this kind of solution?
It’d be a big deal to design better infrastructure for pedestrians in public spaces and privately owned ones, too! I’m thinking about big box stores that have designed parking lots for customers to drive into, but have been less thoughtful about how you get to the front door. Do I really have to risk my life walking through the Target parking lot to buy some TP? 😂
No, LLMs cannot do the things you are claiming they can do. Algorithms built specifically for those purposes might be able to (and frankly I assume there are already people working on them), but a text generation tool cannot. And this is not just pedantry -- when you make claims like this you contribute to the hype machine rather than to actual possible areas where measured applications of technology can be useful. Convincing stakeholders to spend time and money on OpenAI LLM, for example, rather than another more useful algorithm/expertise is the equivalent of hiring the Boring company to control your mass transit rather than just, you know, buying some busses.
But at the end of the day, there are no technological magic bullets. Even if you had an algorithm that did all these things (and, again, I would be surprised is much of this did not already exist in some form or fashion), it doesn't do any good if there is no political will to implement it. That is what I think most people mean when they say there is no technological solution -- too many people think some magic bullet is going to come along and sole what is at the end a political problem and thus spend too much time in the hype cycle and not enough time in the organization trenches.
Not accusing you of that, mind you, just making a general comment on what I see as the state of the conversation generally.
The prioritization of cars over people in the application of technology is what can (and unfortunately does) make tech the enemy of active transportation. You cover this very well, but it truly seems that capitalism, fossil fuel industry, and auto lobbyists are going to have their way when it comes to funding and application of technology and it will be at the expense of vulnerable road users. Same as it ever was.