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Terence Tao on O1

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Re: Terence Tao on O1

#261

Post by mewpmewp2 »

dartos wrote: post #254
a_wild_dandan wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sheer productivity boost from these models is miraculous. It's like upgrading from a text editor to a powerful IDE. I've saved a mountain of hours just by removing tedious time sinks -- one-off language syntax, remembering patterns for some framework, migrating code, etc. And this boost applies to nearly all of my knowledge work. Then I see contrarians claiming that LLMs are literally never useful for anyone, and…

> At this point, such sentiments feel either willfully ignorant, or said in bad faith. I feel exactly the same, but in the opposite direction. As someone who’s been programming for 17 years and working professionally for 10, I’m unable to get any huge productivity boosts from AI tools. They’re better than Google+stack overflow for asking random questions, but in a specific context and they’re good for repetitive, but…

Most gains are from using Copilot, do you use that?

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#262

Post by skybrian »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #26
wenc wrote: post #5

Once GPT is tuned more heavily on Lean (proof assistant) -- the way it is on Python -- I expect its usefulness for research level math to increase. I work in a field related to operations research (OR), and ChatGPT 4o has ingested enough of the OR literature that it's able to spit out very useful Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) formulations for many "problem shapes". For instance, I can give it a logic problem like "…

I entirely agree about their utility. HN, and the internet in general, have become just an ocean of reactionary sandbagging and blather about how "useless" LLMs are. Meanwhile, in the real world, I've found that I haven't written a line of code in weeks. Just paragraphs of text that specify what I want and then guidance through and around pitfalls in a simple iterative loop of useful working code. It's entirely a lea…

What sort of code do you write this way?

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#263

Post by mkarrmann »

dartos wrote: post #249
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first profession AI seems on track to decimate is programming. In particular, the brilliant but remote and individual contributor. There is an obvious conflict of interest in this forum.

No, the first profession AI was on track to decimate was artists, but that didn’t really happen. AI just destroyed shutterstock.

Is most code being written the equivalent of high-art or Shutterstock?

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#264

Post by acedTrex »

WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #26
wenc wrote: post #5

Once GPT is tuned more heavily on Lean (proof assistant) -- the way it is on Python -- I expect its usefulness for research level math to increase. I work in a field related to operations research (OR), and ChatGPT 4o has ingested enough of the OR literature that it's able to spit out very useful Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) formulations for many "problem shapes". For instance, I can give it a logic problem like "…

I entirely agree about their utility. HN, and the internet in general, have become just an ocean of reactionary sandbagging and blather about how "useless" LLMs are. Meanwhile, in the real world, I've found that I haven't written a line of code in weeks. Just paragraphs of text that specify what I want and then guidance through and around pitfalls in a simple iterative loop of useful working code. It's entirely a lea…

> I've found that I haven't written a line of code in weeks

How are people doing this, none of the code that gpt4o/copilot/sonnet spit out i ever use because it never meets my standards. How are other people accepting the shit it spits out.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#265

Post by smileson2 »

apsurd wrote: post #42
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I entirely agree about their utility. HN, and the internet in general, have become just an ocean of reactionary sandbagging and blather about how "useless" LLMs are. Meanwhile, in the real world, I've found that I haven't written a line of code in weeks. Just paragraphs of text that specify what I want and then guidance through and around pitfalls in a simple iterative loop of useful working code. It's entirely a lea…

LLMs are certainly not useless. But "lines of code written" is a hollow metric to prove utility. Code literacy is more effective than code illiteracy. Lines of natural language vs discrete code is a kind of preference. Code is exact which makes it harder to recall and master. But it provides information density. > by just knuckling down and learning how to do the work? This is the key for me. What work? If it's the y…

we're a post illiteracy society now

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#266

Post by acedTrex »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #152
bcoates wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re: Compensation expectations, I figured out a long time ago that bad programmers create bad code, and bad code creates work for good programmers. If the amount of bad code is no longer limited by the availability of workers who can be trained up to "just below average" and instead anyone who knows how to work a touchscreen can make AI slop, this opens up a big economic opportunity.

One could hope, but in my view perception precedes reality and even if that is the reality the perception is that AI will lower compensation demands and those doing the layoffs/hiring will act accordingly. You could also make the same claims about outsourcing, and while it appears that in most cases the outsourcing doesn't pay off, the perception that it would has really damaged CS as a career.

Anything that makes fewer people get into programming is good for the field of CS. Only those who truly care go into it

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#267

Post by mewpmewp2 »

scubbo wrote: post #163
bongodongobob wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ugh, dude, I used to push bad code into production without ChatGPT. It is such a stupid argument. Do you really think people are just blindly pushing code they can't make heads or tails of? That they haven't tested? Do you seriously think people are just one shotting code and blasting it into prod? I am completely baffled by people in this industry that just don't get it . Learn to prompt. Write tests. Wtf.

> Do you really think people are just blindly pushing code they can't make heads or tails of? That they haven't tested? Do you seriously think people are just one shotting code and blasting it into prod? Yes, and I see proof of it _literally every day_ in Code Reviews where I ask juniors to describe or justify their choices and they shrug and say "That's what Copilot told me to put".

That sounds more like poor hiring decisions.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#268

Post by viraptor »

acedTrex wrote: post #264
WhatIsDukkha wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I entirely agree about their utility. HN, and the internet in general, have become just an ocean of reactionary sandbagging and blather about how "useless" LLMs are. Meanwhile, in the real world, I've found that I haven't written a line of code in weeks. Just paragraphs of text that specify what I want and then guidance through and around pitfalls in a simple iterative loop of useful working code. It's entirely a lea…

> I've found that I haven't written a line of code in weeks How are people doing this, none of the code that gpt4o/copilot/sonnet spit out i ever use because it never meets my standards. How are other people accepting the shit it spits out.

You're listing plain models, so I'm assuming you're using them directly. Aider and similar agents use those models but they don't step at the first answer. You can add test running and a linter to the request and it will essentially enter a loop like: what are the steps to solve (prompt)?; here's a map of the repository, which files do you need?; what's your proposed change?; here's the final change and the test run, do you think the problem has been solved?; (go back to the beginning if not)

See the video at https://plandex.ai/ to get an idea how it works.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#269

Post by acedTrex »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #261
dartos wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At this point, such sentiments feel either willfully ignorant, or said in bad faith. I feel exactly the same, but in the opposite direction. As someone who’s been programming for 17 years and working professionally for 10, I’m unable to get any huge productivity boosts from AI tools. They’re better than Google+stack overflow for asking random questions, but in a specific context and they’re good for repetitive, but…

Most gains are from using Copilot, do you use that?

I have it, tried it for a while. I have it turned mostly off new except for rare boilerplate heavy cases.

It kept generating annoyingly wrong code. Things with subtly wrong misleading names, missing edge cases, ignoring immediate same file context etc. I found that it slowed me down so i turned it off.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#270

Post by acedTrex »

viraptor wrote: post #268
acedTrex wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've found that I haven't written a line of code in weeks How are people doing this, none of the code that gpt4o/copilot/sonnet spit out i ever use because it never meets my standards. How are other people accepting the shit it spits out.

You're listing plain models, so I'm assuming you're using them directly. Aider and similar agents use those models but they don't step at the first answer. You can add test running and a linter to the request and it will essentially enter a loop like: what are the steps to solve (prompt)?; here's a map of the repository, which files do you need?; what's your proposed change?; here's the final change and the test run,…

That just sounds/looks like more work then just doing it normally? what am I missing?
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