Live data from Hacker News

Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

openreview.net

11–20 of 54 posts

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#11
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see people saying things like this but I have yet to see anyone show data for a non-trivial workflow with human-level accuracy over a wide range of inputs, without a human in the loop.

Counter argument: this may be a matter of incremental improvement. The breakthroughs may all be behind us. It’s like saying you haven’t yet seen a 1000 mile range EV for under $100k. No you can’t buy such a thing now but it’s clearly possible and we know how to get there by just continuing to grind on battery technology and scale manufacturing. AGI may be at the place a moon landing was in 1950, not where it was in 1…

>by just continuing to grind on battery technology and scale manufacturing.

I think it would be easier to include an ICE and enough fuel to get you to that 1000 miles mark.

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#12
post #5
post #4

This is pretty alarming tbh. Anyone already making a pivot out of SWE?

Article is about prompt engineers (3 month old job type), not swes.

I assume his concern is that a proposed solution to avoid losing your job as a SWE is to essentially become a prompt engineer.

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#13
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter argument: this may be a matter of incremental improvement. The breakthroughs may all be behind us. It’s like saying you haven’t yet seen a 1000 mile range EV for under $100k. No you can’t buy such a thing now but it’s clearly possible and we know how to get there by just continuing to grind on battery technology and scale manufacturing. AGI may be at the place a moon landing was in 1950, not where it was in 1…

You can actually buy a 1000 km range EV for $160k now (MB EQXX). Just as a by the way. :) At this price point it actually has nothing to do with grinding on battery tech and scale manufacturing, the limiting factor is physics. You can only make it so aerodynamic before you hit diminishing returns or it stops looking like a car. You can only make it so lightweight. And so forth. This is vaguely as good as it can get a…

I am not convinced we have cracked AGI. I just would no longer make a large bet that we have not.

We won’t know until an AGI actually starts to act like one. In other words we won’t know until we know and then we are suddenly there.

That doesn’t mean I’m on the doomwagon. I feel kind of weird and contrarian but I am just not that afraid of AGI. For the foreseeable future AGI should be much more afraid of us. Imagine having us for gods. (I actually am a bit concerned that we will accidentally put a sentient mind in hell without knowing what we are doing. Would it know how to tell us? Would we care?)

As far as human survival I’m afraid of whatever it is that is going to get us that nobody including myself is thinking about. That’s not AGI. That’s the alien weapon for which Oumuamua was a spent deceleration stage. (To make up something random. It probably isn’t that.)

I disagree about physical limits with EVs. We are not near the physical limits of battery energy density. From what I have read a 2000 mile EV may be possible, albeit quite far out. But it was just a random contemporary example.

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#14
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Article is about prompt engineers (3 month old job type), not swes.

I assume his concern is that a proposed solution to avoid losing your job as a SWE is to essentially become a prompt engineer.

More or less, but I guess this was to be expected. Why would making prompts be difficult when LLMs are already capable of fairly difficult programming?

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#15
post #4

This is pretty alarming tbh. Anyone already making a pivot out of SWE?

In a sense, Yes - to scoring function engineer.

But in seriousness - language models may be scaling in sophistication exponentially with time, but software engineering problems scale in complexity (on average) exponentially with lines of code. The base of this exponential function isn't large, but it's more than 1.

In the end there's a need for someone who understands what they're doing.

Personally, I use ChatGPT to discover libraries that solve my problems and the ~70% success ratio that I'm seeing with this is enough for me for now.

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter argument: this may be a matter of incremental improvement. The breakthroughs may all be behind us. It’s like saying you haven’t yet seen a 1000 mile range EV for under $100k. No you can’t buy such a thing now but it’s clearly possible and we know how to get there by just continuing to grind on battery technology and scale manufacturing. AGI may be at the place a moon landing was in 1950, not where it was in 1…

>by just continuing to grind on battery technology and scale manufacturing. I think it would be easier to include an ICE and enough fuel to get you to that 1000 miles mark.

It'd be cheaper to then get rid of the battery. Then 10k can be your new price limit. Even 1k can get a good enough junk car that can go that far.

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can actually buy a 1000 km range EV for $160k now (MB EQXX). Just as a by the way. :) At this price point it actually has nothing to do with grinding on battery tech and scale manufacturing, the limiting factor is physics. You can only make it so aerodynamic before you hit diminishing returns or it stops looking like a car. You can only make it so lightweight. And so forth. This is vaguely as good as it can get a…

I am not convinced we have cracked AGI. I just would no longer make a large bet that we have not. We won’t know until an AGI actually starts to act like one. In other words we won’t know until we know and then we are suddenly there. That doesn’t mean I’m on the doomwagon. I feel kind of weird and contrarian but I am just not that afraid of AGI. For the foreseeable future AGI should be much more afraid of us. Imagine…

Fwiw, a majority at OpenAI believes GPT5 will achieve AGI, depending on how you define it, according to Sam Altman.

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#18
post #17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced we have cracked AGI. I just would no longer make a large bet that we have not. We won’t know until an AGI actually starts to act like one. In other words we won’t know until we know and then we are suddenly there. That doesn’t mean I’m on the doomwagon. I feel kind of weird and contrarian but I am just not that afraid of AGI. For the foreseeable future AGI should be much more afraid of us. Imagine…

Fwiw, a majority at OpenAI believes GPT5 will achieve AGI, depending on how you define it, according to Sam Altman.

It is hard to falsify as they are not very open but I believe the keyword here is believe. It is faith/intuition based. Certainly fertile ground for exploration but people who argue back and forth about it remind of the "are we alone in the universe" conversations.

Re: Large Language Models Are Human-Level Prompt Engineers

#19
post #17
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not convinced we have cracked AGI. I just would no longer make a large bet that we have not. We won’t know until an AGI actually starts to act like one. In other words we won’t know until we know and then we are suddenly there. That doesn’t mean I’m on the doomwagon. I feel kind of weird and contrarian but I am just not that afraid of AGI. For the foreseeable future AGI should be much more afraid of us. Imagine…

Fwiw, a majority at OpenAI believes GPT5 will achieve AGI, depending on how you define it, according to Sam Altman.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN