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Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

peterlavigne.com

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Re: Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

#31

Post by procaryote »

empath75 wrote: post #29
Swizec wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including totally trashing the old implementation and creating an entirely new one from scratch that matches all the requirements Let me guess, you've never worked in a real production environment? When your software supports 8, 9, 10 or more zeroes of revenue, "trash the old and create new" are just about the scariest words you can say. There's people relying on this code that you've never even heard of. Really go…

> When your software supports 8, 9, 10 or more zeroes of revenue, "trash the old and create new" are just about the scariest words you can say. There's people relying on this code that you've never even heard of. Well, now it'll take them 5 minutes to rewrite their code to work around your change.

That will be after it broke, which costs money

Also: no

Re: Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

#32

Post by Swizec »

empath75 wrote: post #29
Swizec wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including totally trashing the old implementation and creating an entirely new one from scratch that matches all the requirements Let me guess, you've never worked in a real production environment? When your software supports 8, 9, 10 or more zeroes of revenue, "trash the old and create new" are just about the scariest words you can say. There's people relying on this code that you've never even heard of. Really go…

> When your software supports 8, 9, 10 or more zeroes of revenue, "trash the old and create new" are just about the scariest words you can say. There's people relying on this code that you've never even heard of. Well, now it'll take them 5 minutes to rewrite their code to work around your change.

> Well, now it'll take them 5 minutes to rewrite their code to work around your change

You misunderstand. It will take them 2 years to retrain 5000 people on the new process across hundreds of locations. In some fields, whole new college-level certifications courses will have to be created.

In my specific experience it’s just a few dozen (maybe 100) people doing the manual process on top of our software and it takes weeks for everyone to get used to any significant change.

We still have people using pages that we deprecated a year ago. Nobody can figure out who they are or what they’re missing on the new pages we built

Re: Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

#34

Post by builtbyzac »

phailhaus wrote: post #6

Using FizzBuzz as your proxy for "unreviewed code" is extremely misleading. It has practically no complexity, it's completely self-contained and easy to verify. In any codebase of even modest complexity, the challenge shifts from "does this produce the correct outputs" to "is this going to let me grow the way I need it to in the future" and thornier questions like "does this have the performance characteristics that…

[flagged]

Re: Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

#36

Post by wordpad »

builtbyzac wrote: post #34
phailhaus wrote: post #6

Using FizzBuzz as your proxy for "unreviewed code" is extremely misleading. It has practically no complexity, it's completely self-contained and easy to verify. In any codebase of even modest complexity, the challenge shifts from "does this produce the correct outputs" to "is this going to let me grow the way I need it to in the future" and thornier questions like "does this have the performance characteristics that…

[flagged]

> AI capability problem is mostly solved; the distribution and trust problem isn't.

SaaS opportunity? Maybe, some sort of marketplace of AI-written applications and services with discovery features?

Re: Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

#37

Post by davemp »

So often these AI articles mis or ignore the Test Oracle Problem. Generating correct tests is at least as hard as generating the correct answers (often harder).

I’m actually starting to get annoyed about how much material is getting spread around about software analysis / formal methods by folks ignorant about the basics of the field.

Re: Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

#38

Post by jerf »

"However, I'm starting to think that maintainability and readability aren't relevant in this context. We should treat the output like compiled code."

I would like to put my marker out here as vigorously disagreeing with this. I will quote my post [1] again, which given that this is the third time I've referred to a footnote via link rather suggests this should be lifted out of the footnote:

"It has been lost in AI money-grabbing frenzy but a few years ago we were talking a lot about AIs being “legible”, that they could explain their actions in human-comprehensible terms. “Running code we can examine” is the highest grade of legibility any AI system has produced to date. We should not give that away.

"We will, of course. The Number Must Go Up. We aren’t very good at this sort of thinking.

"But we shouldn’t."

Do not let go of human-readable code. Ask me 20 years ago whether we'd get "unreadable code generation" or "readable code generation" out of AIs and I would have guessed they'd generate completely opaque and unreadable code. Good news! I would have been completely wrong! They in fact produce perfectly readable code. It may be perfectly readable "slop" sometimes, but the slop-ness is a separate issue. Even the slop is still perfectly readable. Don't let go of it.

[1]: https://jerf.org/iri/post/2026/what_value_code_in_ai_era/

Re: Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

#39

Post by dctoedt »

Swizec wrote: post #18
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is this going to let me grow the way I need it to in the future This doesn’t matter in the age of AI - when you get a new requirement just tell the AI to fulfill it and the old requirements (perhaps backed by a decent test suite?) and let it figure out the details, up to and including totally trashing the old implementation and creating an entirely new one from scratch that matches all the requirements. For perform…

> including totally trashing the old implementation and creating an entirely new one from scratch that matches all the requirements Let me guess, you've never worked in a real production environment? When your software supports 8, 9, 10 or more zeroes of revenue, "trash the old and create new" are just about the scariest words you can say. There's people relying on this code that you've never even heard of. Really go…

> Let me guess, you've never worked in a real production environment?

The comment to which you're responding includes a note at the end that the commenter is being sarcastic. Perhaps that wasn't in the comment when you responded to it.

Re: Toward automated verification of unreviewed AI-generated code

#40

Post by lelanthran »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #12
phailhaus wrote: post #6

Using FizzBuzz as your proxy for "unreviewed code" is extremely misleading. It has practically no complexity, it's completely self-contained and easy to verify. In any codebase of even modest complexity, the challenge shifts from "does this produce the correct outputs" to "is this going to let me grow the way I need it to in the future" and thornier questions like "does this have the performance characteristics that…

> is this going to let me grow the way I need it to in the future This doesn’t matter in the age of AI - when you get a new requirement just tell the AI to fulfill it and the old requirements (perhaps backed by a decent test suite?) and let it figure out the details, up to and including totally trashing the old implementation and creating an entirely new one from scratch that matches all the requirements. For perform…

> Or so goes the gospel in the age of AI. I’m being totally sarcastic, I don’t believe in AI coding

You may think you are being sarcastic, but I guarantee that a significant percentage of developers think that both the following are true:

a) They will never need to write code again, and

b) They are some special snowflake that will still remain employed.

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