Who wins in an Arms Race?
Table of Contents
In 2016, Nike shook up the sport of road running with its elite Vaporfly 4% shoe. This shoe factually speeds up elite running times by 3-4% 1, which translates to 4-5 minutes over a 2 hour 30 minute marathon, an impassable advantage.
The Nike Vaporfly 4%
Supershoes make you lose
You might think that racing in these shoes would convey a career-defining advantage, but they actually do the opposite. The shoe only helps one to lose, not to win.
Initially, Nike restricted the supply to its sponsored athletes. Runners sponsored by any other brand were at a disadvantage. After a while, Nike made the shoes generally available, and competitors created similar shoes. Since then, the entire marathon elite field shows up wearing supershoes. They have to: those who don't are competing with a handicap.
In the men’s marathon at the 2016 Rio Olympics, most of the competitors wore the same green Nike shoe. Photo Credit: Norman Katende
LLMs are supershoes
LLMs are like the Vaporfly shoe in the bad ways and not in the good ways.
Whether used for writing software or marketing copy, LLMs promise to make businesses ship faster, both yours and your competitor's. If they live up to this promise (an uncertain claim 2), no winners are made; only losers who don't wear the new shoes.
At least supershoes don't take away fitness. You still have to run. In contrast, LLMs can make you dumber 3. They're mopeds, not bicycles 4.
The winners are the shoe makers, LLM providers, and GPU manufacturers.
Take aways
- In a competitive landscape, LLMs, like supershoes, do not result in your benefit.
- LLM providers are SaaS 5. All SaaS wants to minimize customer turnover and to expand revenue. The SaaS dream is to capture customers and make them dependent on the SaaS offering.
- LLM dependency is both competitive and cognitive.
- Competitive: All of your competitors are using LLMs. You have to keep up with the pack.
- Cognitive: LLM use atrophies one's ability to think and reason, making one likely to prompt again. The dependency is self-reinforcing.