> I would encourage people not to seek advice from successful people like this (survivorship bias).

Personally I don't see the problem, as long as you're aware there is survivorship bias involved here.

What's the alternative really, seek advice from unsuccessful people? That seems worse :)

Personally I do both, read about what worked for people, also read about what didn't work for people, then ignore both and do whatever the fuck I want.

As someone who teaches AI at a university, understanding the basics of how the LLM works is really invaluable to understanding where and how they'll be applied.

You're right that it's probably a little too in the weeds, but it's also a nice clear and fun objective that teaches you the basics. Like building a TODO list in JavaScript to learn webdev or a Gameboy emulator in C++ to learn how a CPU works.

I would encourage young people to be born rich. It's the best time in 100 years to be advantaged. Why waste your potential by having your labor stolen?

> Moreover I am not sure it is even good advice?

I think it is. He isn't saying to learn how to train a LLM so that you can go on to train LLMs. He's saying to learn it so that you gain a deep understanding of how LLMs work. Ordinary startups can still benefit from things like training or fine tuning highly specialised smaller models, knowing how to select and configure an appropriate model for the task at hand, knowing what software to use and why, understanding what's going on behind the scenes instead of treating everything like a black box, having a higher level of intuition about LLMs generally, etc.

Most computer science courses do in fact teach things which are lower level than coding, such as how transistors work.

IMO these kind of advices never matters. Any individual still needs to make tens or hundreds of little decisions (every day) themselves, and that's what really makes all the difference.

> Would you advise a 17 y.o. to learn how transistors work or how to code

how many of us out here are doing work directly in what we got a degree in? I majored in economics and now I'm a CTO.

I would absolutely advise a 17 yo to learn how to code, understand how transitors work and how to code an llm. even if he never works on llms, you basically end up with a kid with applied knowlege of statistics, math, physics hardware, logic and a whole lot of practice in critical thinking.

It cannot be bad advice because learning something even slightly valuable is always good in a vacuum (as you mentioned)

Since he has not given any reference point it is equally as good advice as „just learn everything slightly valuable“.

So the real question is: „What should I not learn in favor of learning this.“

Or in other words: His comment is not usable because it can mean anything or nothing.

As a 17 y.o (way back in the last century) I didn’t need to be advised to learn about transistors. I just had a thirst for the knowledge. I would encourage everyone to learn something about transistors. They are one of mankind’s most useful discoveries.

Right - like advising people to learn nuclear power back in 1992. Perhaps a good idea, but super specific already. My gut is ML/AI is even more complex in 2026… I can’t even remember all the abbreviations and the new ones emerging. And every sub component, such as attention or embeddings, are actually a discipline of its own already.

I just don't think he realizes how saturated it got over the years. Or maybe he knows at a conscious level, but not subconsciously.

In 2000 (his era), it would have been really smart to study the source of Linux or Apache. Would have paid dividends over decades. Cuz that knowledge was so rare. The number of people hacking on LLMs now dwarfs the number of people hacking on web servers 30 years ago, by several orders of magnitude.

And if you turn back the clock even more, I mean just even having access to a computer, let alone owning one, would have put you at a massive advantage.

I don't know what to call it. The pioneers should be respected obviously, but at the same time you need to understand that for them, the game wasn't nearly as played out as it is now.

I just don't think you can afford to be dicking around with LLMs like you could afford to dick around with random Linux distros 20 years ago. Too many people willing to do it for free these days.

You don't wanna end up being the 2030 equivalent of a certain SNES emulator developer, or maintainer of a package manager for jailbroken iPhones, I mean the list goes on and on. Being a hacker doesn't automatically give you a path to being rich, or even making a decent living. It hasn't been that way for a while.

>Would you advise a 17 y.o. to learn how transistors work..

Hell yeah. Transistors are pretty awesome.