> People have tried using TPUs for EM field simulations and found them to be
> largely useless because 16 bit floats aren't all that great.
You should *never* try to use LLM's to do math, and in fact, that's
not how it gets used when it is used properly.
For example, when I asked Gemini to give me a model answering a
financial investment question (e.g., under what assumptions should I
sell highly appreciated stock, and take the tax hit right away, but
allowing me to diversify my holdings, and when does the advantage of
the diversified holdings over take the initial capital gains tax
cost). The way the LLM answered my question was that it generated a
Python script, and then ran that Python program in a sandbox, and the
formatted the results in a table illustrating the assumptions when the
breakeven would be hit.
More importantly, it allowed me to download the Python script, and I
was able to take that script and modify and enhance it to try out different
assumptions.
This was incredibly useful to me, and given that the Python program
was created specifically to model the question that I was asking, (a)
the specialized floating point formay used by LLM's doesn't matter,
(b) we don't have to worry about all of the (valid) concerns of LLM
not being able to do math, and (c) given that the python script was
generated to specific to my question, unless you believe that how to
use python libraries to do time value of money calculations are a
potential copyright problem, I'm not particularly worried about
copyright issues. (The python script was a throwaway, and I wasn't
planning on redistributing it anyway. :-)
This is another *HUGE* benefit of this newest generation of LLMs and it is a revolutionary change in the wider world that I am am already seeing daily - it is personal free software happening at massive scale.
People, who are *NOT* programmers are able to describe their needs in plain language and get their own, personal free software generated that does exactly what *they* want it to do. Be it a Python script, be it a OpenSCAD 3D model, be it an Android or iPhone application or a web app. We are entering into a domain, where an older, non-programmer relative of mine was able to generate an Android app for themselves that replace a paid app and had extra features they really wanted and get that on their phone working perfectly within a couple of hours. It is life-changing enablement that free software movement aways wanted to deliver to everyone, but so far has only been able to deliver to programmers.
This is a massive benefit, that we, as programmers, do not really see or value all that much.