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Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

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Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#211

Post by will5421 »

abc_lisper wrote: post #201

I thought about this first when chatgpt 3.5 came on the scene. Yes, you _can_ at some time in the future, replace programs with AI which would be slow to an extent - if AI can write and manage the code, it _could_ be even faster. But there is a kicker here. It is upto LLM to discover the right abstractions for “thinking” while serving the requests directly or in the code . Coming up with the right abstraction is not…

Didn’t the Google Translate AI invent its own intermediate language for translating between languages?

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#212

Post by CoderLim110 »

_heimdall wrote: post #205
CoderLim110 wrote: post #202

I’ve been thinking about similar questions myself: 1、If code generation eventually works without human intervention, and every Google search could theoretically produce a real-time, custom-generated page, does that mean we no longer need people to build websites at all? At that point, “web development” becomes more like intent-shaping rather than coding. 2、I’m also not convinced that chat is the ideal interface for u…

If (1) is true, there is no use for the web at all really. The only value of an LLM generating a realistic HTML page as an answer is to make it appear as though the answer was found on a preexisting page, lending the answer some level of validity. If users really are fine with the LLM just generating the answer on the fly, doing so in HTML is completely unnecessary. Just give the user answers in text form.

True. Most users just want their problem solved — they don’t care how it’s solved.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#213

Post by Ma8ee »

ychen306 wrote: post #99
ls-a wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to convince the investors. The way the industry is headed is not necessarily related to what is most optimal. That might be the future whether we like it or not. Losing billions seems to be the trend.

Eventually the utility will be correctly priced. It's just a matter of time.

No, it will not be correctly priced. It will reach some kind of local optimum not taking any externalities into account.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#214

Post by cookiengineer »

This demo is pretty great, I love it!

And it reminded me a little about NeuralOS, which appeared here a couple months ago [1]. NeuralOS is different though as they decided to just skip the UI part, too, and let the UI generate based on intent.

Maybe together with your approach we can finally reproduce all the funny holodeck bugs from Star Trek!

[1] https://github.com/yuntian-group/neural-os

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#215

Post by indigoabstract »

Interesting idea, it never crossed my mind, but maybe we can take it further?

Let's say, in the future, when AI learns how to build houses, every time I want to sleep, I'll just ask the AI to build a new house for me, so I can sleep. I guess it will have to repurpose the old one, but that isn't my concern, it's just some implementation detail.

Wouldn't that be nice?

Every night, new house?

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#216

Post by hathawsh »

bfkwlfkjf wrote: post #196
ozim wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is the point where we start to make jokes about Honda owners.

Go on, what about honda owners? I don't know the meme.

The "Wham Baam" YouTube channels have a running joke about Hondas bumping into other cars with concerning frequency.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#217

Post by sublinear »

anonzzzies wrote: post #208
sublinear wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as I love your point, this is where I must ask whether you even want a corporeal form to contain the level of ego you're describing. Would you prefer to be an eternal ghost? To dismiss the entire universe and its hostilities towards our existence and the workarounds we invent in response as mere means to an end rather than our essence is truly wild.

Most people need to go somewhere (in a hurry) to make money or food etc which most people don't want to do if they didn't have to, so yeah it is mostly a means to an end.

And yet that money is ultimately spent on more means to ends that are just as inconvenient from another perspective?

My point was that there is no true end goal as long as whims continue. The need to craft yet more means is equally endless. The crafting is the primary human experience, not the using. The using of a means inevitably becomes transparent and boring.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#218

Post by roncesvalles »

finnborge wrote: post #66
d-lisp wrote: post #54

Why would you need webapps when you could just talk out loud to your computer ? Why would I need programs with colors, buttons, actual UI ? I am trying to imagine a future where file navigators don't even exist : "I want to see the photos I took while I was in vacations last year. Yes, can you remove that cloud ? Perfect, now send it to XXXX's computer and say something nice." "Can you set some timers for my sport se…

I think this is well illustrated in a lot of science fiction. Irregular or abstract tasks are fairly efficiently articulated in speech, just like the ones you provided. Simpler, repetitive ones are not. Imagine having to ask your shower to turn itself on? Or your doors to open? Contextualized to "web-apps," as you have; navigating a list maybe requires an interface. It would be fairly tedious to differentiate between…

On a tangent but I still don't know why we don't have showers where you just press a button and it delivers water at the correct temperature. It seems like the simplest thing that everyone wants. A company that manufactures and installs this (a la SolarCity) should be an instant unicorn.

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#219

Post by hathawsh »

Very insightful and very weird. It's impractical now, but it's a glimpse into some significant part of our future. I can imagine an app called The Last Game, which morphs itself into any game you might want to play. "Let's play 3-D chess like Star Trek: TNG. You should play as Counselor Troi."

(I also just thought of that episode about Moriarty, a Holodeck character, taking over the ship by tricking the crew. It doesn't seem quite so far-fetched anymore!)

Re: Show HN: Why write code if the LLM can just do the thing? (web app experiment)

#220

Post by asim »

This is the future I had always envisioned but could never execute on. The idea that the visual format is dynamic. The data is there, we have the logic and APIs but we need transformation into visual formats based on some input. Ultimately this is the answer. Where you're going to get some pregenerated "cards", embeds and widgets but then also larger flows will be generated and then saved to be used over and over. We're really in the early innings of it all. What it also means is how we consume content will change. The web page is going to get broken down into snippets. Because essentially why do we need the web page or web a website. We don't. It's specific actions we want to perform and so we'll get the output of that. It also means in the long term how data is stored and accessed will be change to reflect a more efficient format for LLMs e.g the vector database for RAG is only the begining.
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