Four Big Trends in LLM Development You Need to Know

In this video, Sam Witteveen discusses four significant trends in the development and application of large language models (LLMs). These trends are crucial for developers and startups focusing on LLM apps or agents. The first trend is that models are getting smarter, as evidenced by recent advancements like Anthropic’s Sonnet 3.5 and Gemini 1.5. Witteveen emphasizes the importance of designing products that can adapt to these smarter models. The second trend is that tokens are getting faster, with technologies like Groq enabling rapid token generation. This speed allows for more complex operations like polling, reflection, and verification, enhancing the quality and responsiveness of LLM-based applications. The third trend is that tokens are becoming cheaper, making it more cost-effective to use advanced LLMs. This reduction in cost is expected to continue, further democratizing access to powerful models. The fourth and final trend is the expansion of context windows, approaching what Witteveen describes as ‘infinite context windows.’ This development could revolutionize how in-context learning and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems are designed, potentially reducing the need for fine-tuning. Witteveen concludes by advising developers to consider these trends when designing their LLM applications, emphasizing the need for flexibility and adaptability in their approaches.