I don’t think essentialist explanations about how LLMs work are very helpful. It doesn’t give any meaningful explanation of the high level nature of the pattern matching that LLMs are capable of. And it draws a dichotomic line between basic pattern matching and knowledge and reasoning, when it is much more complex than that.
> The model can be prompted to talk about competitive dynamics. It can produce text that sounds like adversarial reasoning. But the underlying knowledge is not in the training data. It’s in outcomes that were never written down.
With all the social science research and strategy books that LLMs have read, they actually know a LOT about outcomes and dynamics in adversarial situations.
The author does have a point though that LLMs can’t learn these from their human-in-the-loop reinforcement (which is too controlled or simplified to be meaningful).
Also, I suspect the _word_ models of LLMs are not inherently the problem, they are just inefficient representations of world models.
Interesting, I didn't expect that. I guess stock markets have a good reason to worry about video game studios then. Now, makes me wonder if movie companies stocks were similarly affected when major video models were announced.
To understand whether AI world models could replace traditional video games, it might be useful to compare this to how LLMs have affected old-school role-playing games. LLMs are more mature and have been around longer than AI world models so we should've seen the shift there first.
I don’t personally know anyone who role-plays, so candid question: have LLMs changed the way people play tabletop RPGs?
Yes, the term "middleware" is unfortunate, this is abundantly clear.
> you wouldn't get a new tool simply because you might need it
No but you get a framework precisely because it's "batteries included": many apps will need those tools. You don’t have to use all of them, but having them available reduces friction when you do.
> If Next.js wants to allow you to run code on the edge before your app is called, that's fine, but it should be opt-in
It already is. Nothing runs at the edge unless you add a middleware.ts. You can build a full app without any middleware. I'm surprised the author of the article fails to acknowledge this, given how much time was spent on finding alternative solutions and writing the article.
I think “middleware” is a bit of a misnomer in Next.js. It’s really an edge function that runs before your request hits the app -- quick header checks, routing, and other lightweight guards. It runs on the edge runtime, not on the app server.
The post's author seems to conflate the edge runtime with the server runtime. They’re separate environments with different constraints and trade-offs.
I struggled with Next.js at first for the same reason: you have to know what runs where (edge, server, client). Because it’s all JavaScript, the boundaries can blur. So having a clear mental model matters. But blaming Next.js for that complexity is like blaming a toolbox for having more than a hammer.
I don’t think essentialist explanations about how LLMs work are very helpful. It doesn’t give any meaningful explanation of the high level nature of the pattern matching that LLMs are capable of. And it draws a dichotomic line between basic pattern matching and knowledge and reasoning, when it is much more complex than that.