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Paul Graham: 'If I were 17, I'd learn how to build LLMs from scratch' and would not start a startup
Graham posted on August 23 that asked what he'd do at 17, he'd learn to build LLMs from scratch and train the most powerful ones he could on whatever hardware he could get, explicitly not start a company, because better startup ideas grow out of deep understanding than out of what a 17-year-old already knows. He added he'd then try to work out why LLMs can write essays but not clean bedrooms, and study whatever would help solve that. It hit 561 points on Hacker News on August 24, with the counter-argument being that fine-tuning or building on open weights is the realistic path for anyone without training-scale hardware.
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