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LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

arxiv.org

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Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#211

Post by oblio »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #209
mediaman wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make the example any more complicated, it makes sense. A lathe operator isn’t any good if they don’t frequently operate lathes. A articulated robot implementer needs frequent experience implementing robots to be any good. That doesn’t mean lathes or robots are useless. Nor does it mean they have failed as products because they require expertise. I do think it raises questions as to whether vast swathes of the…

I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft.

> I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft.

Perhaps that craft of using the exact subset of English has something to do with the correct selection of words and concise, yet expressive enough, expressions, in a fashion resembling creating a code.

A code that's meant to be understood by machines, we could call it "computer code". And said computer code could be used to create recipes, algorithms, let's call them "programs". Hey, I think I have ideas for 2 possible names for this process!

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#212

Post by roryokane »

fatso784 wrote: post #197

My problem with this kind of work is—-obviously they do. Did anyone seriously think otherwise? I’m shocked why these are even questions deserving scientific scrutiny. Have people truly lost their critical thinking that badly already?

In history, why did scientists research gravity for so long? Were they too stupid to realize that they were obviously being pulled towards the ground? No. They hoped to learn about the details. Eventually they learned details that were not apparent from everyday experience, such as the formula for how gravity scales with mass.

It’s the same here. For example, this study concluded that most changes are safe and some are very bad, as opposed to most changes being slightly bad. That is not obvious, especially to infrequent LLM users.

Also, even “obvious” conclusions are within the scope of science. I’ve spent too long writing this already to look up an example, but I bet there have been countries in the past whose leaders chose “obviously-good” monetary policies that economic research could have shown was counterproductive. The world is complicated, and without systems of communication such as academia, it’s hard to be sure if what you see is what everyone else sees.

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#213

Post by jrflowers »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #206
jrflowers wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You love it because you want it to stay this way so you can forever believe AI will never be better than you. >Bro the reality is unfolding as you speak >You go pretend you live in that reality where the bullets will never appear. It’s too late bro, roko’s basilisk was real and it’s already punishing you

Stick with the argument. When I said the experiment is inaccurate to the current abilities of AI it’s fucking right. Admit it and stop going off tangents. There’s no argument against this. You’re dodging and weaving trying to dodge reality. I don’t know who roko is and I don’t give a shit.

There isn’t an argument. We agree that

> Models DO do that.

and I haven’t challenged that this doesn’t sit comfortably with your opinions about the future. I believe that you feel that way, nobody is arguing that you don’t

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#214

Post by roryokane »

julianlam wrote: post #133
andrewljohnson wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just look at the diff when you do a pull request, no prayer needed, and if you want it to be “surgical” in that way, your prompt (and agents.md) can be specific. You can also unit test the function to better assure behavior didn’t change.

Indeed, that's what I do. I inspect the diff, though if it's an indentation change the entire block will be marked changed. Still not an excuse to not read every line of course... Unit tests give me the confidence that at least those tested logic paths are unaffected. Sometimes with older codebases one cannot assume the paths have adequate test coverage.

Many diff tools, such as delta (https://github.com/dandavison/delta) and the ones built into VS Code and IDEs by JetBrains, can configured to highlight changes within each line (by word) and ignore changes to whitespace. Those features save me a lot of time when I review diffs that include indentation changes or variable renames.

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#215

Post by deadbabe »

embedding-shape wrote: post #194
deadbabe wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s pretty telling that ignoring LLMs entirely for a few years and then jumping in last minute after everyone has struggled through figuring out how to use them still puts you on the same level very quickly.

> then jumping in last minute after everyone has struggled through figuring out how to use them still puts you on the same level very quickly Does it actually though? I've used agents for quite some time now, if someone who never used agents before want to put this to the test somehow, I'm open to try to measure this, reach out via email :)

What would you even propose as a test

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#216

Post by [deleted] »

oblio wrote: post #211
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft.

> I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft. Perhaps that craft of using the exact subset of English has something to do with the correct selection…

[deleted]

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#217

Post by [deleted] »

oblio wrote: post #211
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft.

> I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft. Perhaps that craft of using the exact subset of English has something to do with the correct selection…

[deleted]

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#218

Post by Kim_Bruning »

oblio wrote: post #211
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft.

> I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft. Perhaps that craft of using the exact subset of English has something to do with the correct selection…

No wait, you think I'm being silly so that's why you're being a bit sarcastic back.

But seriously, you can put a shebang on an english text file now (if you're sufficiently brave), or feed it through something that spits out code on the other end (so you can proof read the consequences before executing them).

It's crazy, but this is 2026, and that actually ... just works. You can even do it locally, if you don't mind running a space heater.

Thing is, when you have the expressiveness and power of a full natural language (and you're already paying for it), why would you want to constrain yourself to a subset? That's not very practical. Why not use all of it? Computing was never about typing code into machines anyway. "Computer" used to be a human profession, until it got automated.

On the upside, there's thousands of years of documentation. On the downside, a lot said documentation is underspecified and/or straight wishful thinking. It's certainly an interesting avenue to explore.

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#219

Post by oblio »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #218
oblio wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I figure english is the next coolest programming language for scripting and compilation. So far people have been writing fun little demos with it, but now people are starting to place real demands on it, and you're starting to see actual programs needing to be built. Unsurprisingly this requires a bit more craft. Perhaps that craft of using the exact subset of English has something to do with the correct selection…

No wait, you think I'm being silly so that's why you're being a bit sarcastic back. But seriously, you can put a shebang on an english text file now (if you're sufficiently brave), or feed it through something that spits out code on the other end (so you can proof read the consequences before executing them). It's crazy, but this is 2026, and that actually ... just works. You can even do it locally, if you don't mind…

> why would you want to constrain yourself to a subset? That's not very practical. Why not use all of it?

For the same reason math, physics, chemistry, etc figured out a long time ago that Koine Greek, Latin, French, German, English, etc aren't the best languages for science. Constraint gives focus, precision.

If you code novels, knock yourself out.

Re: LLMs corrupt your documents when you delegate

#220

Post by Kim_Bruning »

oblio wrote: post #219
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No wait, you think I'm being silly so that's why you're being a bit sarcastic back. But seriously, you can put a shebang on an english text file now (if you're sufficiently brave), or feed it through something that spits out code on the other end (so you can proof read the consequences before executing them). It's crazy, but this is 2026, and that actually ... just works. You can even do it locally, if you don't mind…

> why would you want to constrain yourself to a subset? That's not very practical. Why not use all of it? For the same reason math, physics, chemistry, etc figured out a long time ago that Koine Greek, Latin, French, German, English, etc aren't the best languages for science. Constraint gives focus, precision. If you code novels, knock yourself out.

In a semi-random sample of 10 recent articles on arxiv.org, 10 articles (100%) contained english language as the predominant part of the corpus. Where necessary mathematical notation was included.

So - you're not wrong that eg. mathematical notation is (often) used, as we both very well know. But English is really quite prominent!

And now computers can process both, where before they couldn't.

The engineering doesn't go away, not yet. Decomposition, abstraction, state management, blast radius containment O:-) . But now you can express much more of that in the language the arxiv papers are already written in.

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