LLM 🧠💻 and Yeast 🧬 – Both share the superpower 💪 of adaption!

With the arrival of large language models (LLM) like ChatGPT, we can use LLM in many different situations. An LLM is supposed to have a good general knowledge 🧠 about our world and can therefore adapt to many different situations. For instance, summarizing a long document could be done with a simple prompt by ChatGPT. The same ChatGPT can, in another situation, find helpful FAQ articles to an incoming support email and answer the email automatically.

This level of adaptability 👻 is amazing. Now let’s have a look at the yeast.

Yeast 🧬 transforms sugar into alcohol in the absence of air. It produces wine 🍷 or beer 🍺. Yeast transforms sugar into CO2 in the presence of air. It makes dough rise and bread 🍞 light and spongy.

The magic behind this is the complete adaptation of the genetic 🧬 material. Yeast has about 6400 genes. During the transition from producing alcohol to producing CO2 700 genes are activated and 1030 get deactivated. A deactivated gene is no more used during cell activity. Switching genes “on” and “off” can be done by the presence of certain proteins in the cell. In this case 27 % of the genome is involved in the transition. What a huge level of adaptation!

What can we learn as human from these two examples of adaption? We know how to use yeast in the best way to have beer, wine AND bread using the different powers of Yeast.

We should with a similar approach use the different possible applications of LLMs. Even if a LLM can adapt to a lot of different situations, only some might be interesting and useful. We do not try to use yeast to answer emails. We should learn form our experience using yeast and apply it to the use of LLMs. For yeast we have learned two useful environments with oxygen and without. We should not put yeast in a hot environment, it will destroy it. Looking at LLMs, we should find the right environment where to use LLMs like travel planning or email summarization. We should not use LLM in a crucial environment like in a courthouse during a trial. The power of adaption brings limits to usage with it.

I only can recommend to read the book “Evolution’s Rainbow” 🌈 from Joan Roughgarden. You will find the whole story about yeast in chapter 17.

You might look 👁 in a different way at yeast made beer, wine and bread, the next time you see it!