Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Terence Tao on O1

mathstodon.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 527 posts

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#351

Post by ksec »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #149

Rewind your mind to 2019 and imagine reading a post that said “The experience seemed roughly on par with trying to advise a mediocre, but not completely incompetent, graduate student.” With regard to interacting with the equivalent of Alexa. That’s a remarkable difference in 5 years.

Which is why I think the AI era isn't hype but very much real. Jensen said AI has reached the era of iPhone.

We wont have AGI or ASI, whatever definition people have with those terms in the next 5 - 10 years. But I would often like to refer AI as Assisted or Argumented Intelligence. And it will provide enough value that drives current Computer and Smartphone sales for at least another 5 - 10 years. Or 3-4 cycles.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#352

Post by Maxion »

vessenes wrote: post #299
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.

I see this theory a lot but mostly from people who haven’t tried pair coding with a quality llm. In fact these llms give experienced developers super powers; you can be crazy productive with them. If you think we are close to the maximum useful software in the world already, then maybe. I do not believe that. Seeing software production and time costs drop one to two orders of magnitude means we will have very differe…

I totally agree, there e.g. so many companies out there who rely on fully manual processes internally simply because they cannot currently afford to hire programmers to solve the problems they have for them. The ROI just isn't there.

Reduce costs by an order of magnitude or two, and suddenly there's a whole heap more projects that become profitable.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#353

Post by delusional »

throwaway765123 wrote: post #271
macrolime wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of problems is really not where LLMs shine. Where you save loads of time is when you need to write lots of code using unfamiliar APIs. Especially when it's APIs you won't work with a lot and spending loads of time learning then would just be a waste of time. In these cases LLMs call tell you the correct API cells and it's easy to verify. The LLM isn't really solving some difficult technical problem, but sav…

This exactly. LLMs can't reason, so we shouldn't expect them to try. They can do translation extremely well, so things like converting descriptions to 90-95% correct code in 10-100x less time, or converting from one language to another, are the killer use cases IMO. But expecting them to solve difficult unsolved problems is a fundamental misunderstanding of what they are under the hood.

I picked this problem specifically because it's about "converting from one language to another". The problem is already solved in the literature. I understand that doing cutting edge research is a different problem, and that is explicitly not what I'm doing here, nor what I am expecting of the tool. I have coauthored an actual published computer science paper, and this excercise is VERY far from the complexity of that.

Could you share some concrete experience of a problem where aider, or a tool like it, helped you? What was your workflow, and how was the experience?

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#354

Post by JumpCrisscross »

IncreasePosts wrote: post #309
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before it can replace the brilliant programmer, it needs to be able to replace the mediocre programmer Nope. Compensation is exponential. Being able to replace a top performer with a fee mediocre devs pair coding with an LLM is more than fine for 90% of use cases.

A mediocre programmer won't be able to judge the allegedly expert level output any better than a non-programmer, so I don't see how that would work. I think it is more likely that great programmers might just increase their productivity even more with, which will make their value even greater.

> mediocre programmer won't be able to judge the allegedly expert level output any better than a non-programmer, so I don't see how that would work

Sure. Plenty of businesses are. Particularly in the commercial automation sector that numerically hires the most people.

> more likely that great programmers might just increase their productivity

For those in high-productivity, high-margin businesses, yes. For most of the world, no—the surplus productivity doesn’t outweigh the compensation and concentration risk.

I broadly expect a spate of age discrimination lawsuits in the near future because most businesses don’t need a few stars. In the meantime, I’ve watched a lot of people find two people in Brazil + an LLM equals one WFH very good (but not brilliant) coder.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#355

Post by JumpCrisscross »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #336
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before it can replace the brilliant programmer, it needs to be able to replace the mediocre programmer Nope. Compensation is exponential. Being able to replace a top performer with a fee mediocre devs pair coding with an LLM is more than fine for 90% of use cases.

This makes no sense, there are problems that 'brilliant' programmers can solve and no number of mediocre ones ones. Just like you can't substitute Mozart with 100 mediocre composers.

> there are problems that 'brilliant' programmers can solve and no number of mediocre ones ones

These people will continue to have value. But most businesses don’t have problems that can be profitable solved only by brilliant coders.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#356

Post by imiric »

lifeformed wrote: post #311
skydhash wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Much Much more productive world by just knuckling down and learning how to do the work. The fact everyone that say they've become more productive with LLMs won't say how exactly. I can talk about how VIM have make it more enjoyable to edit code (keybinding and motions), how Emacs is a good environment around text tooling (lisp machine), how I use technical books to further my learning (so many great books out here)…

I think people who are successfully using it to write code are just chaining APIs together to make the same web apps you see everywhere.

The vast majority of software is "just chaining APIs together". It makes sense that LLMs would excel at code they've been trained on the most, which means they can be useful to a lot of people. This also means that these people will be the first to be made redundant by LLMs, once the quality improves enough.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#357

Post by sph »

skybrian wrote: post #262
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…

What sort of code do you write this way?

Probably nothing a junior programmer wouldn't be able to do relatively easily.

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#359

Post by airspresso »

p-e-w wrote: post #317
rvnx wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a problem of ego. It is difficult if you have been told all your life that you are the best, to accept the fact that a computer or even other people might be better than you. It requires lot of self-reflection. Real top-tiers programmers actually don’t feel threatened by LLMs. For them it is just one more tool in the toolbox like syntax highlighting or code completion. They choose to use these tools based…

> Real top-tiers programmers actually don’t feel threatened by LLMs. They should, because LLMs are coming for them also, just maybe 2-3 years later than for programmers that aren't "real top-tier". The idea that human intellect is something especially difficult to replicate is just delusional. There is no reason to assume so, considering that we have gone from hole card programming to LLMs competing with humans in a…

> The difference is that nobody will pay programmers to keep programming once LLMs outperform them. Programmers will simply become as obsolete as horse-drawn carriages, essentially overnight.

I don't buy this. A big part of the programmer's job is to convert vague and poorly described business requirements into something that is actually possible to implement in code and that roughly solves the business need. LLMs don't solve that part at all since it requires back and forth with business stakeholders to clarify what they want and educate them on how software can help. Sure, when the requirements are finally clear enough, LLMs can make a solution. But then the tasks of testing it, building, deploying and maintaining it remain too, which also typically fall to the programmer. LLMs are useful tools in each stage of the process and speed up tasks, but not replacing the human that designs and architects the solution (the programmer).

Re: Terence Tao on O1

#360

Post by 9dev »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #336
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before it can replace the brilliant programmer, it needs to be able to replace the mediocre programmer Nope. Compensation is exponential. Being able to replace a top performer with a fee mediocre devs pair coding with an LLM is more than fine for 90% of use cases.

This makes no sense, there are problems that 'brilliant' programmers can solve and no number of mediocre ones ones. Just like you can't substitute Mozart with 100 mediocre composers.

So, how many people listen to Mozart and how many to Taylor Swift?
Post reply on HN