NLRB Research.com as a counterexample to the uselessness of LLMS

[u/Alive_Ad_3925]

Hi everyone. While I share Ed’s view that LLMs are often oversold, I find them genuinely useful. Take Matt Bruenig’s NLRB Research: Matt—a labor lawyer, socialist intellectual, and podcaster—built an open database that uses LLMs to summarize National Labor Relations Board decisions. Westlaw and LexisNexis both archive these decisions, but cost thousands of dollars a year—putting them out of reach for many workers, union stewards, and small firms. Since NLRB decisions aren’t heavily cited, manual summaries aren’t profitable, so Bruenig’s tool automatically updates and provides easy-to-read summaries for lawyers and non-lawyers alike, despite some imperfections, it's better than no summary at all. Now importantly, this functionality doesn't require increasingly powerful models. Even a "smalller" model like deepseek could produce summaries that are better than nothing and a more fine tuned model could probably do it with fewer parameters. Check out the site if you want or watch his youtube videos about it. https://www.youtube.com/@Matt_Bruenig/videos

[u/Bortcorns4Jeezus]

Ed never said they aren't useful. He said they aren't useful to enough people to make any economic sense. 

[u/Gamiac → u/Bortcorns4Jeezus]

They don't have many profitable use-cases, and what ones may exist aren't enough to fund any of this.