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What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

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Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#71

Post by the_af »

layer8 wrote: post #16
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did tho. He mentioned more than once that OOP was more about message passing than behavior + state.

Yes, that’s what I mean by vague suggestions. How do you actually build and maintain a system of any complexity with that? How do you ensure it will do what it is supposed to do? And Smalltalk wasn’t that, it is mostly just regular method calls and not “message passing”.

> Yes, that’s what I mean by vague suggestions. How do you actually build and maintain a system of any complexity with that?

Reminds me of the RESTful guy, Roy Fielding (though I respect and like Alan Kay way more). If you've read any of his online interactions, apparently nobody does REST like he envisioned. It simply doesn't exist in the wild. When asked about some REST API, he'll claim it's not RESTful, it's wrong, that's not what he meant, etc. "But what would be right?", you ask, and he'll reply "Read my paper! HATEOAS! (Hypermedia as the engine of application state)". "Ok, but what does it mean in practice, how do I go about building an API with HATEOAS?"...

...and there's no answer for that besides "read my dissertation". He can only tell you what you're doing wrong, but nobody has been able to build a "true" RESTful API to Roy Fielding's satisfaction.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#72

Post by r00fus »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #65

Typical Alan Kay. Very long, very thought provoking, full of historical references, and barely answered the question at all. :)

He did give a TL;DR about halfway through his answer: "Finally, to try to answer the question … (Summary: I don’t think it would be a good idea at all)"

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#73

Post by halayli »

kergonath wrote: post #62
ozten wrote: post #29

> That humans also do this all the time is “interesting”, “dangerous” etc., but it is also why trying to move from superstition (this is actually what “reasoning by correlation” amounts to) to more scientific methods is critical for anything like civilization to be created. "reasoning by correlation" as superstition is a brutal insight.

> "reasoning by correlation" as superstition is a brutal insight. I don’t think he is right on that one, though. Reasoning by correlation is a kind of empiricism, and it can be tested. “These things happen together” or “if I do this, then that happens” can be disproven with statistical analysis even without any understanding of the underlying mechanisms at play their causes. Superstition is beyond that; it is a belie…

Superstition is assuming a causation when you identify a correlation.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#74

Post by pixl97 »

r00fus wrote: post #67
ianbicking wrote: post #59

This feels like a limited and perhaps naive perspective on LLMs. If you looked at computers as adding machines in the 60s/70s then you'd be missing most of what was interesting about computers. And if you look at LLMs as a question answering service now, you are also missing a lot. It's hard to compare trust of LLMs to other computing, because many of the things that LLMs get wrong and right were previously intractab…

> If you use an LLM for something that you can directly compare to a non-LLM system, such as speech recognition or intent parsing, it's clear that the LLM is more trustworthy Except for the hallucination problem, sure. How do you ensure the answer you get from an LLM is not a hallucination? It sure doesn't.

How do you ensure any bits of data? You going to fist fight your uncle at the next family reunion when he promises you pigs can actually fly?

There are plenty of bits of data that can be hard references to datasets or actual physics to assign their probability value. And there are other things that can't.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#75

Post by Phiwise_ »

kergonath wrote: post #62
ozten wrote: post #29

> That humans also do this all the time is “interesting”, “dangerous” etc., but it is also why trying to move from superstition (this is actually what “reasoning by correlation” amounts to) to more scientific methods is critical for anything like civilization to be created. "reasoning by correlation" as superstition is a brutal insight.

> "reasoning by correlation" as superstition is a brutal insight. I don’t think he is right on that one, though. Reasoning by correlation is a kind of empiricism, and it can be tested. “These things happen together” or “if I do this, then that happens” can be disproven with statistical analysis even without any understanding of the underlying mechanisms at play their causes. Superstition is beyond that; it is a belie…

A road trip by random walk is also a kind of empiricism that can be tested. This does not imply it is worth the energy to actually do.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#76

Post by soperj »

pixl97 wrote: post #70
ianbicking wrote: post #59

This feels like a limited and perhaps naive perspective on LLMs. If you looked at computers as adding machines in the 60s/70s then you'd be missing most of what was interesting about computers. And if you look at LLMs as a question answering service now, you are also missing a lot. It's hard to compare trust of LLMs to other computing, because many of the things that LLMs get wrong and right were previously intractab…

“All models are wrong, some are useful.” What's kind of funny is almost all the people that complain about accuracy of LLMs would gladly answer the question of "What's the chance for rain today" without giving giving you a 5 minute lecture on what forecasts actually mean.

"I'm unable to provide real-time weather updates as my data is not current. To find out the chances of rain today, you can check your local weather forecast through a reliable weather website or app, or tune in to a local news station for the most up-to-date information." - chatgtp

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#77

Post by ianbicking »

r00fus wrote: post #67
ianbicking wrote: post #59

This feels like a limited and perhaps naive perspective on LLMs. If you looked at computers as adding machines in the 60s/70s then you'd be missing most of what was interesting about computers. And if you look at LLMs as a question answering service now, you are also missing a lot. It's hard to compare trust of LLMs to other computing, because many of the things that LLMs get wrong and right were previously intractab…

> If you use an LLM for something that you can directly compare to a non-LLM system, such as speech recognition or intent parsing, it's clear that the LLM is more trustworthy Except for the hallucination problem, sure. How do you ensure the answer you get from an LLM is not a hallucination? It sure doesn't.

"How do you ensure the answer you get from an LLM is not a hallucination?"

Intent parsing and speech recognition both frequently return inaccurate responses. It is true that with an LLM it can return something that is sensible but invented, where other systems typically return less inventive wrong answers.

With any of these systems you want to balance the probability of an incorrect interpretation against the impact of the action being taken, and get confirmation based on that. That's pretty normal engineering and UX.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#78

Post by keybored »

What I like about programming (real programming) is that it is dumb and obtuse. You can see why things happen. Because the instruction languages are painfully literal. They will throw their hands up if you omit a step. Or crash.

You can understand it.

That’s why I dread the AI future.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#79

Post by n4r9 »

kergonath wrote: post #62
ozten wrote: post #29

> That humans also do this all the time is “interesting”, “dangerous” etc., but it is also why trying to move from superstition (this is actually what “reasoning by correlation” amounts to) to more scientific methods is critical for anything like civilization to be created. "reasoning by correlation" as superstition is a brutal insight.

> "reasoning by correlation" as superstition is a brutal insight. I don’t think he is right on that one, though. Reasoning by correlation is a kind of empiricism, and it can be tested. “These things happen together” or “if I do this, then that happens” can be disproven with statistical analysis even without any understanding of the underlying mechanisms at play their causes. Superstition is beyond that; it is a belie…

There are plenty of superstitions that are perfectly falsifiable. People continue to believe in them for comfort. For example, wearing odd socks to a sports match helps your team win. Or, leaving a fan on overnight might kill you.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#80

Post by jdlshore »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #63
fmap wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Others have already mentioned this, but Alan Kay spent his entire career experimenting with approaches to radically simplify computing. The progress reports from vpri give a good overview of a recent project that has since wrapped up, e.g.: https://tinlizzie.org/VPRIPapers/tr2012001_steps.pdf

>> Others have already mentioned this, but Alan Kay spent his entire career experimenting with approaches to radically simplify computing. Yes. And yet, he created OOP [1]. Strange. ________________ [1] Not on his own.

You’re saying this like it’s a “gotcha,” which makes me believe you’re confusing OOP-as-practiced-in-enterprise with OOP-as-invented-by-Kay.

The sad truth is that most great ideas are doomed to drown in a sea of mediocrity and misinterpretation.

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