Renaud Richardet - Blog

Condensations of Human Thought (pipes, silicon, and what truly flows)

Let's reimagine how we see LLMs, not just as silicon and code, but as a vessel carrying the distilled intelligence and writings of humanity

Our house has its own spring. When I picture it, I see water flowing straight from the mountain, filling my glass. I see the moutain. I don’t dwell on the pipe that carries it there, or on the people who laid that pipe (though I’m grateful to them).

In the same way, when we think about a large language model, we tend to fixate on the silicon, we just see the matrix operations choosing the next word.

But really, it’s better seen as a condensation of humanity’s writings. An oracle we can turn to for advice.

Imagine the countless bouts of human intelligence that have flowed into shaping that oracle.