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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#281

Post by FeepingCreature »

stillpointlab wrote: post #255
AndyKelley wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You speak with a passive voice, as if the future is something that happens to you, rather than something that you participate in.

There is an old cliché about stopping the tide coming in. I mean, yeah you can get out there and participate in trying to stop it. This isn't about fatalism or even pessimism. The tide coming in isn't good or bad. It's more like the refrain from Game of Thrones: Winter is coming. You prepare for it. Your time might be better served finding shelter and warm clothing rather than engaging in a futile attempt to prevent…

Reminder that the Dutch exist.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#282

Post by bestouff »

idiocrat wrote: post #268
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

Do we still need program source code? One idea would be not to have the code as the result of your prompt, but the result itself. Why not to let the environment do everything integrated, according to your prompt? Else you have the disconnect between the prompt and the generated code. The generated code need to run somewhere, need to be integrated and maintained. That stringdiff function is a part of the bigger enviro…

At least for now the source code is the contract with the machine, to know what you really expect it to do. But I agree that more "freeform" languages (e.g. JS) could be less useful in an LLM world.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#283

Post by Jensson »

eric-burel wrote: post #133
lsy wrote: post #63

I think two things can be true simultaneously: 1. LLMs are a new technology and it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle with that. It's difficult to imagine a future where they don't continue to exist in some form, with all the timesaving benefits and social issues that come with them. 2. Almost three years in, companies investing in LLMs have not yet discovered a business model that justifies the massive expen…

Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet. Using an LLM UI like open ai is like we just figured fire and you use it to warm you hands (still impressive when you think about it, but not worth the burns), while LLM development is about building car engines (here is you return on investment).

> Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet

There are thousands of startups doing exactly that right now, why do you think this will work when all evidence points towards it not working? Or why else would it not already have revolutionized everything a year or two ago when everyone started doing this?

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#284

Post by tonyedgecombe »

cmdli wrote: post #204
chadcmulligan wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any code thats easy to define and tedious I just get AI's to do it now, and its awesome. Saves me so much work, though you have to read the code, it still puts in odd stuff sometimes.

How much of the code you are writing is tedious? If its a significant amount, the framework you are using could use some improvement.

I have a suspicion that the majority of code is rather mundane. After all the community did create the term CRUD to describe typical corporate work.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#285

Post by therealpygon »

bradly wrote: post #121
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

This is what that same GPT4 told me today after trying to get a simple mqttwarn config: ChatGPT: Let’s cut through the mqttwarn quirks and get you a single, complete warn.ini that I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32 Me: that "I’ve actually tested with mqttwarn 0.32:" How did you perform this test? ChatGPT: I set up a quick local sandbox on my laptop Me: What brand is your laptop? What store did you buy it at? Cha…

In a code editor or the website? Coding using the website has distinct disadvantages, imo.

But yeah… Arguing with an LLM is never worthwhile. If it doesn’t (mostly) work the first time, roll back and start over with a better prompt. This is because there is a big element of randomness (seed) that causes every run to potentially be different, ranging from slight to drastic. Basically, you can get junior dev who should be fired one time, and a senior engineer the next. Start over, improve the prompt/context/plan, run it again. E.g. there is a reason the Copilot in-line editor has that little try again button right there; because you should use it, same with entire prompts—hence the reason the up arrow in VS Code Copilot gives you back your last prompt.

Also, lots of times it means it just doesn’t have the right context to pull from (or too much, or not useful, depending on the model). Small well-defined tasks are almost always better. Documentation in an LLM readable/searchable format can be highly beneficial, especially API references for libraries that are well organized, or things like Context7 MCP if the library is recent or can be parsed correctly by C7. Expecting a general knowledge LLM to be an expert in every language/library or to just intuit correctly from the library sources hasn’t ever worked out well in my experience (unless it is a small library).

At least that’s my 2 cents if you’re interested. Hope it is helpful (to someone).

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#286

Post by pydry »

eric-burel wrote: post #133
lsy wrote: post #63

I think two things can be true simultaneously: 1. LLMs are a new technology and it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle with that. It's difficult to imagine a future where they don't continue to exist in some form, with all the timesaving benefits and social issues that come with them. 2. Almost three years in, companies investing in LLMs have not yet discovered a business model that justifies the massive expen…

Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet. Using an LLM UI like open ai is like we just figured fire and you use it to warm you hands (still impressive when you think about it, but not worth the burns), while LLM development is about building car engines (here is you return on investment).

Theyre doing it so much it's practically a cliche.

There are underserved areas of the economy but agentic startups is not one.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#287

Post by nosianu »

blks wrote: post #262
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

So how big was the library? If I understood correctly, it was a single file library (with hours worth of documentation)? Or did you go over all files of that library and copy it file by file?

Funny you use something the author of the linked post talks about at the start. This is one of those debate methods. Reframe what was said!

I don't remember that the OP claimed that all problems are solved, perfectly. Do you think by showing examples where AI struggles you really show their point to be wrong? I don't see that.

I use AI only sparingly, but when I do I too experience saving lots of time. For example, I'm only superficially familiar with MS Excel or Power Query scripting APIs and function names. Too bad I've become the got-to point for little mean problems for colleagues. Instead of having to read lots of docs and do lots of trial and error, I now formulate what I want to ChatGPT, give it the file, and thus far I have always received the solution, a transformed file. Sure, anyone regularly using Excel/Power Query could have written the few lines of code easily enough, but since I don't, and don't plan to, being able to use plain language and let the AI do the actual coding is a huge time saver.

For SOME problems in this world it works. Nobody claimed anything you seem to be trying to argue against, that it solves ALL problems, so that finding one or a few counter-examples where it fails invalidates the argument made. And the problems it does solve are not trivial and that it works is quite miraculous and was not possible before.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#288

Post by TeMPOraL »

bambax wrote: post #256
mg wrote: post #70

In the 90s a friend told me about the internet. And that he knows someone who is in a university and has access to it and can show us. An hour later, we were sitting in front of a computer in that university and watched his friend surfing the web. Clicking on links, receiving pages of text. Faster than one could read. In a nice layout. Even with images. And links to other pages. We were shocked. No printing, no shipp…

The problem with LLM is when they're used for creativity or for thinking. Just because LLMs are indeed useful in some (even many!) context, including coding, esp. to either get something started, or, like in your example, to transcode an existing code base to another platform, doesn't mean they will change everything . It doesn't mean “AI is the new electricity.” (actual quote from Andrew Ng in the post). More like A…

> It doesn't mean “AI is the new electricity.” (actual quote from Andrew Ng in the post).

I personally agree with Andrew Ng here (and I've literally arrived at the exact same formulation before becoming aware of Ng's words).

I take "new electricity" to mean, it'll touch everything people do, become part of every endeavor in some shape of form. Much like electricity. That doesn't mean taking over literally everything; there's plenty of things we don't use electricity for, because alternatives - usually much older alternatives - are still better.

There's still plenty of internal combustion engines on the ground, in the seas and in the skies, and many of them (mostly on extremely light and extremely heavy ends of the spectrum) are not going to be replaced by electric engines any time soon. Plenty of manufacturing and construction is still done by means of hydraulic and pneumatic power. We also sometimes sidestep electricity for heating purposes by going straight from sunlight to heat. Etc.

But even there, electricity-based technology is present in some form. The engine may be this humongous diesel-burning colossus, built from heat, metal, and a lot of pneumatics, positioned and held in place by hydraulics - but all the sensors on it are electric, where in the past some would be hydraulic and rest wouldn't even exist; it's controlled and operated by electricity-based computing network; it's been designed on computers, and so on.

In this sense, I think "AI is a new electricity" is believable. It's a qualitatively new approach to computing, that's directly or indirectly applicable everywhere, and that people already try to apply to literally everything[0]. And, much like with electricity, time and economics will tell which of those applications make sense, which were dead ends, and which were plain dumb in retrospect.

--

[0] - And they really did try to stuff electricity everywhere back when it was the new hot thing. Same with nuclear energy few decades later. We still laugh at how people 100 years ago imagined the future will look like... in between crying that we got short-changed by reality.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#289

Post by tonyedgecombe »

bestouff wrote: post #282
idiocrat wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we still need program source code? One idea would be not to have the code as the result of your prompt, but the result itself. Why not to let the environment do everything integrated, according to your prompt? Else you have the disconnect between the prompt and the generated code. The generated code need to run somewhere, need to be integrated and maintained. That stringdiff function is a part of the bigger enviro…

At least for now the source code is the contract with the machine, to know what you really expect it to do. But I agree that more "freeform" languages (e.g. JS) could be less useful in an LLM world.

I wonder what the end state of all this is, how capable will these tools become, where on the curve of capabilities are we.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#290

Post by TeMPOraL »

eru wrote: post #280
bambax wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with LLM is when they're used for creativity or for thinking. Just because LLMs are indeed useful in some (even many!) context, including coding, esp. to either get something started, or, like in your example, to transcode an existing code base to another platform, doesn't mean they will change everything . It doesn't mean “AI is the new electricity.” (actual quote from Andrew Ng in the post). More like A…

I don't know about VBA, but spreadsheets actually delivered (to a large extent) on the promise that 'everyone can write simple programs'. So much so that people don't see creating a spreadsheet as coding. Before spreadsheets you had to beg for months for the IT department to pick your request, and then you'd have to wait a quarter or two for them to implement a buggy version of your idea. After spreadsheets, you can…

Right. Spreadsheeds already delivered on their promise (and then some) decades ago, and the irony is, many people - especially software engineers - still don't see it.

> Before spreadsheets you had to beg for months for the IT department to pick your request, and then you'd have to wait a quarter or two for them to implement a buggy version of your idea. After spreadsheets, you can hack together a buggy version of your idea yourself over a weekend.

That is still the refrain of corporate IT. I see plenty of comments both here and on wider social media, showing that many in our field still just don't get why people resort to building Excel sheets instead of learning to code / asking your software department to make a tool for you.

I guess those who do get it end up working on SaaS products targeting the "shadow IT" market :).

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