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My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

simonwillison.net

381–390 of 415 posts

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#381
post #91
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subjects in the study you are referencing also believed that they were more productive with it. What metrics do you have to convince yourself you aren't under the same illusionary bias they were?

Yesterday I used ffmpeg to extract the frame at the 13 second mark of a video out as a JPEG. If I didn't have an LLM to figure that out for me I wouldn't have done it at all.

Was the answer:

ffmpeg -ss 00:00:13:00 -i myvideo.avi -frames:v 1 myimage.jpeg

Because this is on stack overflow and it took maybe one second to find.

I've found reading the man page for a tool is usually a better way to learn what a tool can do for you now and also in the future.

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#382
post #212

A $xxxx 2.5 year old laptop, one that's probably much more powerful than an average laptop bought today and probably next year as well. I don't think it's a fair reference point.

His point isn't that you can run a model on an average laptop, but that the same laptop can still run frontier models. It speaks to the advancements in models that aren't just throwing more compute/ram at it. Also, his laptop isn't that fancy. > It claims to be small enough to run on consumer hardware. I just ran the 7B and 13B models on my 64GB M2 MacBook Pro! From: https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/11/llama/

[deleted]

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#383
post #141
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prompt was > Write an HTML and JavaScript page implementing space invaders It may not be "copy pasting" but it's generating output as best it can be recreated from its training on looking at Space Invaders source code. The engineers at Taito that originally developed Space Invaders were not told "make Space Invaders" and then did their best to recall all the source code they've looked at in their life to re-type…

The source code for original Space Invaders from 1978 has never been published. The closest to that is disassembled ROMs. I used that prompt because it's the shortest possible prompt that tells the model to build a game with a specific set of features. If I wanted to build a custom game I would have had to write a prompt that was many paragraphs longer than that. The aim of this piece isn't "OMG looks LLMs can build…

I have good news about how games were programmed in the 70's. What if I told you the disassembled ROM is the code.

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#384
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I used ffmpeg to extract the frame at the 13 second mark of a video out as a JPEG. If I didn't have an LLM to figure that out for me I wouldn't have done it at all.

Was the answer: ffmpeg -ss 00:00:13:00 -i myvideo.avi -frames:v 1 myimage.jpeg Because this is on stack overflow and it took maybe one second to find. I've found reading the man page for a tool is usually a better way to learn what a tool can do for you now and also in the future.

This is the rub for me… people are so quick to forget the original source for a lot of the data these models were trained on, and how easy and useful these platforms were. Now Google will summarize this question for you in an AI overview before you even land on Stack Overflow. It’s killing the network effect of the open web and destroying our crowd sourced platforms in favor of a lossy compression algorithm that will eventually be regurgitating its own entrails.

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> coding isn't one homogeneous activity that one model beats all the other models at If you can't even replace one coding model with another, it's hard to imagine you can replace human coders with coding models.

You probably can't replace a seasoned COBOL programmer with a seasoned Haskell programmer. Does that mean that either person is bad at programming as a whole?

This was my point -- if programmers are not fungible, how can companies claim to be replacing them by the thousands with AI?

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#387
What is the biggest group of people that uses local AI? Students who don’t want to pay but somehow have hardware? Devs who are price conscious?

I kinda think about it like Linux- there’s an audience for it but most people will just use Windows. Are AI capabilities in a local device necessary even in whatever future self serving state some companies are pushing?

It feels like we do it because we can more than because it makes sense- which I am all for! I just wonder if i’m missing some kind of major use case all around me

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#388
post #359
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen a GGUF for it yet, I imagine one will show up on Hugging Face soon which will probably work with Ollama.

Do you think local LLMs combined with P2P networks could become a thing? Imagine people adding datasets to an open model, the same way they add blocks to a blockchain, which is around 500GB in size. It could help decentralise power and reduce our dependency on the big players.

There have been ambitions to do that kind of thing with LoRA - see the leaked "no moat" Google memo from a couple of years ago for one example: https://simonwillison.net/2023/May/4/no-moat/

It hasn't really happened though. I suspect that's because it turns out techniques like RAG or tool calling are massively easier and more effective than trying to tech models new information through shared model weights.

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was the answer: ffmpeg -ss 00:00:13:00 -i myvideo.avi -frames:v 1 myimage.jpeg Because this is on stack overflow and it took maybe one second to find. I've found reading the man page for a tool is usually a better way to learn what a tool can do for you now and also in the future.

This is the rub for me… people are so quick to forget the original source for a lot of the data these models were trained on, and how easy and useful these platforms were. Now Google will summarize this question for you in an AI overview before you even land on Stack Overflow. It’s killing the network effect of the open web and destroying our crowd sourced platforms in favor of a lossy compression algorithm that will…

Well, maybe. People will just stop using them and will make fun of people who do. You can only bullshit people for so long.

Re: My 2.5 year old laptop can write Space Invaders in JavaScript now (GLM-4.5 Air)

#390
post #363
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know these models can build games and apps they've never seen before because I've already observed them doing exactly that time and time again. If you haven't seen that yourself yet I suggest firing up the free, no registration required GLM-4.5 Air on https://chat.z.ai/ and seeing if you can prove yourself wrong.

I’m using all major models it a daily driver and none of these can create anything I have not spent excessive amount of time explaining. It works for me on the architectural level, but does not change the fact that your expounding on prior information and not a new one. Not sure though why I’m getting downvoted.

You said: "Pretty sure it cannot write a game it has never seen"

Then you said: "none of these can create anything I have not spent excessive amount of time explaining"

Presumably then they CAN create a game they have never seen if you spend an "excessive amount of time" explaining that game?

So are you talking about game design here? It can implement anything, but it can't design entirely new games without human input?

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