Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The form in which Large Language Models (LLMs) entered the public consciousness in late 2022 was highly suggestive: as “chatbots” that seemingly could answer any question and fulfill any task, as long as it only involved written language. People who were unprepared for their first interactions with ChatGPT were highly impressed—it writes limericks! It can answer math questions! It can give me an outline for my term paper! What the universality cleverly concealed was the question of whether it is truly effective at any particular task. For principled reasons, these models are doomed to be generalists: given a prefix sequence, they will always predict the next token.
In my keynote, I will describe some recent efforts to use the framing of “LLMs as function approximators” to better understand what LLMs are doing, where their real generality lies, and how they can be transformed from multi-trick ponies into potentially useful system components. A panel discussion with KDE Treasurer and Vice President Eike Hein will follow the talk to explore how these components can be made useful to the KDE developer community.
KDE is an open-source community developing free software for desktop and mobile, including the powerful Plasma desktop environment. Join the KDE community to contribute, learn, and shape the future of open-source software!
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The form in which Large Language Models (LLMs) entered the public consciousness in late 2022 was highly suggestive: as “chatbots” that seemingly could answer any question and fulfill any task, as long as it only involved written language. People who were unprepared for their first interactions with ChatGPT were highly impressed—it writes limericks! It can answer math questions! It can give me an outline for my term paper! What the universality cleverly concealed was the question of whether it is truly effective at any particular task. For principled reasons, these models are doomed to be generalists: given a prefix sequence, they will always predict the next token.
In my keynote, I will describe some recent efforts to use the framing of “LLMs as function approximators” to better understand what LLMs are doing, where their real generality lies, and how they can be transformed from multi-trick ponies into potentially useful system components. A panel discussion with KDE Treasurer and Vice President Eike Hein will follow the talk to explore how these components can be made useful to the KDE developer community.
KDE is an open-source community developing free software for desktop and mobile, including the powerful Plasma desktop environment. Join the KDE community to contribute, learn, and shape the future of open-source software!
🔗 Explore KDE:
🌐 Website: kde.org
💬 Forum: discuss.kde.org
📢 Follow KDE on Social Media:
🐘 Mastodon: https://floss.social/@kde
📹 PeerTube: tube.kockatoo.org/c/kde
📘 Facebook: facebook.com/KDE
💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/kde
👾 Reddit: reddit.com/r/kde
🌿 Lemmy: https://lemmy.ml/c/kde
📷 Instagram: instagram.com/kdecommunity
🌌 Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kde.org
🧵 Threads: threads.net/@kdecommunity
🔔 Like, Share & Subscribe for More Open-Source Content!
📌 Hashtags:
#KDE #Plasma #OpenSource #Linux #FOSS #FreeSoftware #KDECommunity #KDEApps #Tech
