## Behold! Another Language Model Arrives, Just What We Needed
Seriously? *Another* one? It seems like every week a new contender enters the AI arena, promising to revolutionize… something. Apparently, now we have this thing – let’s just call it “The Thing” for simplicity’s sake – and it’s a 3-12b model. What does that even *mean*? Does it measure its personality in nanograms? Is that supposed to impress me? I’m picturing tiny engineers huddled around a spreadsheet, arguing over the precise number of parameters. “We need more! More parameters equal…more… stuff!”
Honestly, the breathless pronouncements surrounding this Thing are exhausting. “Significant advancements!” they cry. “Cutting-edge technology!” I’m pretty sure my toaster is cutting-edge in its ability to burn bread. It’s doing something that was previously unheard of, I bet! We were all just waiting for *this*, weren’t we? The missing piece to solving… what exactly? Global warming? World hunger? Deciding which streaming service has the best snacks?
And now it’s going to be unleashed upon us. We can look forward to even more convincingly-written emails from scammers, increasingly sophisticated deepfakes of our political leaders doing interpretive dance, and an endless supply of vaguely unsettling poetry about sunsets. Wonderful! Just what my life was lacking.
I’m sure it will generate text in a “creative” way. I’m prepared for lengthy analyses of the societal impact of decorative doorknobs. It’s bound to be thrilling. Truly, it’s progress. It’s just…more. More code, more data, more things to learn so I can pretend to understand what it’s doing while simultaneously feeling increasingly obsolete. Pass me a bag of popcorn. This is going to be entertaining in a deeply depressing sort of way.
