Training the focused models can also be cheaper, at least once there’s a solid training corpus. There’s no reason to burn a supertanker filled with oil just to teach a legal LLM the details of 17th century French poetry or the mating habits of river otters. As the kids say, “Skip to the good parts.”
Creating the training corpus, though, can be a challenge. Many of the teams are hiring their own experts to build out ontologies and double-check the answers. They’re relying on humans to make sure the facts are solid and backed by trustworthy references. When LLMs were new, users would forgive a few hallucinations. That won’t fly with users who have serious questions like legal or medical decisions.
Much of the focus is on the most expensive tiers of expertise—medicine, law, finance, and engineering. In a sense, the jobs market has already identified the tasks that are the most valuable to society. The teams building the focused LLMs can just look to emulate the doctors, lawyers, and bankers.
But while these focused services will definitely erode the ability of these talented humans to demand high wages, it’s not clear how many will be replaced. The LLMs excel at finding obscure facts, often with a broader and more comprehensive range of knowledge. It may be better to think of them as “force multipliers” for the right humans.