LLMs are just really good search. Ask it to create something and it's searching within the pretrained weights. Ask it to find something and it's semantically searching within your codebase. Ask it to modify something and it will do both. Once you understand its just search, you can get really good results.
Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them
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Re: Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't think we'll get to the point where all you have is a CEO and a massive Claude account but it's not completely science fiction the more I think about it. At that point, why do you even need the CEO?
And who does he sell his software to? Companies that have only 1 employee, don’t need a lot of user licenses for their employees…
Re: Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them
#13LLMs are just really good search. Ask it to create something and it's searching within the pretrained weights. Ask it to find something and it's semantically searching within your codebase. Ask it to modify something and it will do both. Once you understand its just search, you can get really good results.
Calling it "just search" is like calling a compiler "just string manipulation". Not false, but aggressively missing the point.
Re: Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
Calling it "just search" is like calling a compiler "just string manipulation". Not false, but aggressively missing the point.
No, “just search” is correct. Boosters desperately want it to be something more, but it really is just a tool.
Is your CPU running arbitrary code "just search over transistor states"?
Calling LLMs "just search" is the kind of reductive take that sounds clever while explaining nothing. By that logic, your brain is "just electrochemical gradients".
Re: Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, “just search” is correct. Boosters desperately want it to be something more, but it really is just a tool.
Yes, it is a tool. No, it is not "just search". Is your CPU running arbitrary code "just search over transistor states"? Calling LLMs "just search" is the kind of reductive take that sounds clever while explaining nothing. By that logic, your brain is "just electrochemical gradients".
Re: Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them
#16LLMs are just really good search. Ask it to create something and it's searching within the pretrained weights. Ask it to find something and it's semantically searching within your codebase. Ask it to modify something and it will do both. Once you understand its just search, you can get really good results.
classical search simply retrieves, llms can synthesize as well.
Re: Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them
#17LLMs are just really good search. Ask it to create something and it's searching within the pretrained weights. Ask it to find something and it's semantically searching within your codebase. Ask it to modify something and it will do both. Once you understand its just search, you can get really good results.
better mental model: it's a lossy compression of human knowledge that can decompress and recombine in novel (sometimes useful, sometimes sloppy) ways. classical search simply retrieves, llms can synthesize as well.
Not quite autocomplete but not intelligence either.
Re: Claude is good at assembling blocks, but still falls apart at creating them
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, “just search” is correct. Boosters desperately want it to be something more, but it really is just a tool.
Yes, it is a tool. No, it is not "just search". Is your CPU running arbitrary code "just search over transistor states"? Calling LLMs "just search" is the kind of reductive take that sounds clever while explaining nothing. By that logic, your brain is "just electrochemical gradients".
To me it's "search" like a missile does "flight". It's got a target and a closed loop guidance, and is mostly fire and forget (for search). At that, it excels.
I think the closed loop+great summary is the key to all the magic.