Today I read via Simon Willison’s blog that [someone has managed to get LlaMA running on a raspberry pi]. That’s pretty incredible progress and it made me think of this excerpt from Hitchiker’s Guide To the Galaxy:

O Deep Thought computer," he said, “the task we have designed you to perform is this. We want you to tell us….” he paused, “The Answer.”

“The Answer?” said Deep Thought. “The Answer to what?”

“Life!” urged Fook.

“The Universe!” said Lunkwill.

“Everything!” they said in chorus.

Deep Thought paused for a moment’s reflection.

“Tricky,” he said finally.

“But can you do it?”

Again, a significant pause.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought, “I can do it.”

“There is an answer?” said Fook with breathless excitement.

“Yes,” said Deep Thought. “Life, the Universe, and Everything. There is an answer. But, I’ll have to think about it.”

…

Fook glanced impatiently at his watch.

“How long?” he said.

“Seven and a half million years,” said Deep Thought.

Lunkwill and Fook blinked at each other.

“Seven and a half million years…!” they cried in chorus.

“Yes,” declaimed Deep Thought, “I said I’d have to think about it, didn’t I?"

Maybe Deep Thought was actually just an LLM running on a raspberry pi and that’s why it took so long to generate the ultimate answer!