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Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

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Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#231

Meanwhile, I asked this morning Claude 4 to write a simple EXIF normalizer. After two rounds of prompting it to double-check its code, I still had to point out that it makes no sense to load the entire image for re-orientating if the EXIF orientation is fine in the first place. Vibe vs reality, and anyone actually working in the space daily can attest how brittle these systems are. Maybe this changes in SWE with more…

A manager in our company introduced Gemini as a chat bot coupled to our documentation. > It failed to write out our company name.The rest was flawed with hallucinations also, hardly worth to mention. I wish this is a rage bait towards others, but what should me feelings be? After all this is the tool thats sold to me, I am expected to work with.

We had exactly the opposite experience. CoPilot was able to answer questions accurately and reformatted the existing documentation to fit the context of users' questions, which made the information much easier to understand.

Code examples, which we offer as sort of reference implementations, were also adopted to fit the specific questions without much issues. Granted these aren't whole applications, but 10 - 25 line examples of doing API setup / calls.

We didn't, of course, just send users' questions directly to CoPilot. Instead there's a bit of prompt magic behind the scenes that tweaks the context so that CoPilot can produce better quality results.

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#232
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving is not a general problem, though. But what's driving a car? A generalist human brain that has been trained for ~30 hours to drive a car.

Human brain's aren't generalist! We have multiple parts of the brain that interact in vastly different ways! Your cerebellum won't be running the role of the pons. Most parts of the brain cannot take over for others. Self-healing is the exception, not the rule. Yes, we have a degree of neuroplasticity, but there are many limits. (Sidenote: Driver's license here is 240 hours.)

> We have multiple parts of the brain that interact in vastly different ways!

Yes, and thanks to that human brains are generalist

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The presenter made certain to identify three interested actors (governments, corporations, "regular people") and how LLM offerings are not controlled by governments. This is a bit disingenuous. I don't think that's what he said, he was identifying the first customers and uses.

>> A recurring theme presented, however, is that LLM's are somehow not controlled by the corporations which expose them as a service. The presenter made certain to identify three interested actors (governments, corporations, "regular people") and how LLM offerings are not controlled by governments. This is a bit disingenuous. > I don't think that's what he said, he was identifying the first customers and uses. The po…

Yeah that's explicitly about first customers and first uses, not about who controls it.

I don't see how it minimizes the control corporations have to note this. Especially since he's quite clear about how everything is currently centralized / time share model, and obviously hopeful we can enter an era that's more analogous to the PC era, even explicitly telling the audience maybe some of them will work on making that happen.

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#234
post #177

His dismissal of smaller and local models suggests he underestimates their improvement potential. Give phi4 a run and see what I mean.

Of all the things you could suggest, a lack of understanding is not one that can be pinned on Karpathy. He does know his technical stuff.

We all have blind spots

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#235
post #218
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office software, CAD systems, Web Browsers, the list is long.

Microsoft (famously developing somewhat popular office-like software) seems to be going in the direction of almost forcing developers to use LLMs to assist with coding, at least going by what people are willing to admit publicly and seeing some GitHub activity. Google (made a small browser or something) also develops their own models, I don't think it's far fetched to imagine there is at least one developer on the Ch…

Microsoft is also selling "AI", so they want headlines like "30% of our code is written by AI". So they force open source developers to babysit the tools and suffer.

It's also an advertisement for potential "AI" military applications that they undoubtedly propose after the HoloLens failure:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/13/23402195/microsoft-us-ar...

The HoloLens failure is a great example of overhyped technology, just like the bunker busters that are now in the headlines for overpromising.

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#236
post #177

His dismissal of smaller and local models suggests he underestimates their improvement potential. Give phi4 a run and see what I mean.

He ain't dismissing them. Comparing local/"open" model to Linux (and closed services to Windows and MacOS) is high praise. It's also accurate.

This is a bad comparison

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no significant software that has been written (plagiarized) by "AI". How do you know? As you haven't evidenced your claim, you could start by providing explicit examples of what is significant. Even if you are correct, the amount of llm-assisted code is increasing all the time, and we are still only a couple of years in - give it time. Why not ask the actual experts Many would regard Karpathy in the expert c…

I think you should not turn things around here. Up to 2021 we had a vibrant software environment that obviously had zero "AI" input. It has made companies and some developers filthy rich. Since "AI" became a religion, it is used as an excuse for layoffs while no serious software is written by "AI" . The "AI" people are making the claims. Since they invading a functioning software environment, it is their responsibili…

Still wonder what your definition of "serious software" is. I kinda concur - I consider most of the webshit to be not serious, but then, this is where software industry makes bulk of its profits, and that space is absolutely being eaten by agentic coding, right now, today.

So if we s/serious/money-making/, you are wrong - or at least about to be proven, as these things enter prod and are talked about.

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#239
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of all the things you could suggest, a lack of understanding is not one that can be pinned on Karpathy. He does know his technical stuff.

We all have blind spots

Sure, but maybe suggesting that the person who literally spent countless hours educating others on how to build small models locally from scratch, is lacking knowledge about local small models is going a bit beyond "people have blind spots".

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#240
post #193

when I started coding at the age of 11 in machine code and assembly on the C64, the dream was to create software that creates software. Nowadays it's almost reality, almost because the devil is always in the details. When you're used to write code, writing code is relatively fast. You need this knowledge to debug issues with generated code. However you're now telling AI to fix the bugs in the generated code. I see it…

> This is a toy for rich people

GitHub copilot has a free tier.

Google gives you thousands of free LLM API calls per day.

There are other free providers too.

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