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GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

lukebechtel.com

31–40 of 338 posts

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#31
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. The first sample is: > Indentation-based scoping, similar to Python. Then... > class Person { To me, it's very clear it doesn't really understand what "indentation-based scoping" means. For a human programmer, using both intentation-based and bracket-based scoping is a very unusual design choice, and is begging for further explanation. It talked pages of abstraction, modularity, etc, but not this ? I…

Author here -- I think it is a stochastic parrot, don't get me wrong. But my argument is that humans are also , at some level, sufficiently advanced stochastic parrots. At least, as it pertains to many creative endeavors. You're always building on the back of something that comes before. We're all just remixing ideas we've heard before. I mean even this comment -- none of the words I'm saying are new, and many of the…

> none of the words I'm saying are new, and many of the word combinations I'm using have been used time and time again. The ideas I'm expressing have merit -- but are they wholly original?

Then why are you saying it? But besides that query, your "word combination" bit elicited a 'so what?'

> We're all just remixing ideas we've heard before.

Something wrong with the grammar in that sentence. (Or do you go by we/us?)

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#32
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Author here -- I think it is a stochastic parrot, don't get me wrong. But my argument is that humans are also , at some level, sufficiently advanced stochastic parrots. At least, as it pertains to many creative endeavors. You're always building on the back of something that comes before. We're all just remixing ideas we've heard before. I mean even this comment -- none of the words I'm saying are new, and many of the…

yeah, but colloquially when people start using the term "stochastic parrot" they're referring to something far stupider. From a Technical and pedantic standpoint it could be said ALL intelligence is isomorphic to a stochastic parrot so it's not reasonable to assume in common communication that people are referring to the technical definition when they talk. Your point in the article is basically saying that chatGPT i…

> yeah, but colloquially when people start using the term "stochastic parrot" they're referring to something far stupider. From a Technical and pedantic standpoint it could be said ALL intelligence is isomorphic to a stochastic parrot

I mean that's somewhat his point (if I understand him correctly). All intelligence could effectively be described as a "stochastic parrot" as a result, calling something a "stochastic parrot" is a roughly meaningless insult that is really a thinly-veiled way of saying "no it's dumber than me" without actually using those words.

And his point is, it's essentially a defense mechanism in people when challenged by something that is much smarter than expected to overly emphasis it's mistakes and fall back to "no it'd dumber than me" than evaluate it for what it actually is.

I think that's the issue. It's a defense mechanism.

If you replace "stochastic parrot" in most of those comments with "it's dumber than me" you see what the comment essentially is. "It's dumber than me. I'm smarter than it, I don't need to be worried about it".

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future data that's posted on the internet will be curated by humans. Humans don't post things that are incorrect or outright wrong. That curation IS human data and will allow data from LLMs to further improve LLMs. Additionally, there's a randomness element that are part of LLMs that allow LLMs to generate non-deterministic responses that when further curated by humans potentially allows LLMs to become Even better.

> Humans don't post things that are incorrect or outright wrong. Are you using ChatGPT to write this comment? If not, I mean... are you okay?

I think the better question is to ask the GP: "Are you a bot?"

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. The first sample is: > Indentation-based scoping, similar to Python. Then... > class Person { To me, it's very clear it doesn't really understand what "indentation-based scoping" means. For a human programmer, using both intentation-based and bracket-based scoping is a very unusual design choice, and is begging for further explanation. It talked pages of abstraction, modularity, etc, but not this ? I…

>The advent of chatGPT had millions of people on the internet trying to downplay the intelligence of chatGPT by continuously trying to re-emphasize the things it gets wrong. Again the parroting. AI has been getting things wrong for decades. It's old news. The paradigm shift here is in the things it gets right. Because some of the things it gets right can not be attributed to anything else other than the concept of "u…

> Because some of the things it gets right can not be attributed to anything else other than the concept of "understanding".

Or just large dataset. The new thing we got was parsing natural languages, then we did a markov chain based on that so that it outputs semantic correct follow-ups based on what people on the internet would likely do/say in similar situations, and you get this result.

It is very easy to see that it works this way if you play around a bit with what it can and can't do, just identify what sort of conversation it used as a template and you can make it print nonsense by inputting values that wont work in that template.

Edit: Also generating next state based on previous state is literally what the model does and is the definition of a Markov chain, Markov chains is a statistical concept and not just a word chain.

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#36
post #4

Well of course it likes Python, it is Python.

There are let declarations and a built-in actor model and some DSL for RPC services (rather than libraries), but otherwise it's literal Python written with a different syntax. I think I prefer Python in Haskell's disguise: https://pyos.github.io/dg/

Discussed 7 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32456151 (10 comments)

And 3 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22368330 (77 comments)

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#37
I see lots of criticism about how GPT4 simply invented a language that is a mix of Python and TS, and therefore it’s not intelligent.

However, given that (anecdotally, at least) 50% of candidates would regurgitate what they learnt from interview prep material given a general design question such as “Design Google drive” and the like, I’m not sure if most people are simply projecting their insecurities.

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#38
It's looking increasingly possible that, at some point in the not-too-far future machines will be so good at creating software that humans won't be competitive in any way, and won't be in the loop at all. I happen to think that once machines reach this point humans won't be competitive in the labor market at all for long. It doesn't seem plausible that automatic driving would still be decades off, or that the trades would be safe from automation indefinitely, when an AI could simply spawn teams of thousands of super-fast ML engineers who don't need to eat, sleep or schedule meetings.

But anyway, assuming that humans are completely out of the software loop at some point, I have been wondering what AI-generated code will look like. Will AI continue to build on top of the human-generated open source corpus, or leave it behind? If the latter, will abstraction and code reuse be useful at all for AI's or will it be simpler for them to just build every application completely from scratch? If there is abstraction and code reuse, what will the language look like? What will libraries and API's look like? Will there even be applications, or just a single mega-chatgpt that generates code as needed to serve our requests? Will we even make requests, or will it just read our minds and desires and respond?

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans don't post things that are incorrect or outright wrong. Are you using ChatGPT to write this comment? If not, I mean... are you okay?

I think the better question is to ask the GP: "Are you a bot?"

No.

Re: GPT-4 Designed a Programming Language

#40
post #4

Well of course it likes Python, it is Python.

There are let declarations and a built-in actor model and some DSL for RPC services (rather than libraries), but otherwise it's literal Python written with a different syntax. I think I prefer Python in Haskell's disguise: https://pyos.github.io/dg/

I think OP is playing off the fact that ChatGPT is programmed in Python, and hence the bias towards that language :)
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