AI State of the World. Simon Willison
If you’re tracking LLMs and AI developments, check out this punchy, state-of-the-world presentation from AI and technology insider Simon Willison at NICAR 2025.
Several key comments align with my recent thoughts:
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The GPT-4 barrier has been broken, with 18 labs now achieving similar capabilities. OpenAI is no longer the undisputed leader.
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The importance of performing specific evals for actual use cases. Even informal evaluations help - keep a file of test prompts and revisit them as models improve.
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OCR and data extraction are reaching new heights. Vision LLMs, especially Gemini, are getting remarkably good at handling PDFs and images.
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Cost reductions continue dramatically. Multi-modal inference keeps dropping fast, with some models becoming surprisingly affordable.
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“LLMs are extraordinarily good at writing code. This should no longer be controversial — there’s too much evidence in its favor.”
