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Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

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Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#101

Post by zamadatix »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #98

People forget that while technology grows, society also grows to support that. I already strongly suspect that LLMs are just going to magnify the dominance of python as LLMs can remove the most friction from its use. Then will come the second order effects where libraries are explicitly written to be LLM friendly, further removing friction. LLMs write code best in python -> python gets used more -> python gets optimi…

LLMs removing friction from using coding languages would, at first glance, seem to erode Python's advantage rather than solidify it further. As a specific example LLMs can not only spit out HTML+JS+CSS but the user can interact with the output directly in browser/"app".

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#102

Post by johnea »

What the hell, we elect world leaders based on misinformation, why not add s/w features for the same reason?

In our new post truth, anti-realism reality, pounding one's head against a brick wall is often instructive in the way the brain damage actually produces great results!

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#103

Post by jonathaneunice »

Paving the folkways!

Figuring out the paths that users (or LLMs) actually want to take—not based on your original design or model of what paths they should want, but based on the paths that they actually do want and do trod down. Aka, meeting demand.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#104

Post by alwa »

dingnuts wrote: post #60

[flagged]

Does this extend to the heuristic TFA refers to? Where they end up (voluntarily or not) referring to what LLMs hallucinate as a kind of “normative expectation,” then use that to guide their own original work and to minimize the degree to which they’re unintentionally surprising their audience? In this case it feels a little icky and demanding because the ASCII tablature feature feels itself like an artifact of ChatGPT’s limitations. But like some of the commenters upthread, I like the idea of using it for “if you came into my project cold, how would you expect it to work?”

Having wrangled some open-source work that’s the kind of genius that only its mother could love… there’s a place for idiosyncratic interface design (UI-wise and API-wise), but there’s also a whole group of people who are great at that design sensibility. That category of people doesn’t always overlap with people who are great at the underlying engineering. Similarly, as academic writing tends to demonstrate, people with interesting and important ideas aren’t always people with a tremendous facility for writing to be read.

(And then there are people like me who have neither—I agree that you should roll your eyes at anything I ask an LLM to squirt out! :)

But GP’s technique, like TFA’s, sounds to me like something closer to that of a person with something meaningful to say, who now has a patient close-reader alongside them while they hone drafts. It’s not like you’d take half of your test reader’s suggestions, but some of them might be good in a way that didn’t occur to you in the moment, right?

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#105

Post by bityard »

normie3000 wrote: post #90
suzzer99 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes it comes up with a better approach than I had thought of. IMO this has always been the killer use case for AI—from Google Maps to Grammarly. I discovered Grammarly at the very last phase of writing my book. I accepted maybe 1/3 of its suggestions, which is pretty damn good considering my book had already been edited by me dozens of times AND professionally copy-edited. But if I'd have accepted all of Gram…

What's wrong with passive?

In addition to the points already made, passive voice is painfully boring to read. And it's literally everywhere in technical documentation, unfortunately.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#106

Post by dontlikeyoueith »

carlosjobim wrote: post #68
romanhn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While AI hallucination problems are widely known to the technical crowd, that's not really the case with the general population. Perhaps that applies to the majority of the user base even. I've certainly known folks who place inordinate amount of trust in AI output, and I could see them misplacing the blame when a "promised" feature doesn't work right.

The thing is that it doesn't matter. If they're not customers it doesn't matter at all what they think. People get false ideas all the time of what kind of services a business might or might not offer.

> If they're not customers it doesn't matter at all what they think

That kind of thinking is how you never get new customers and eventually fail as a business.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#107

Post by kragen »

bityard wrote: post #105
normie3000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with passive?

In addition to the points already made, passive voice is painfully boring to read. And it's literally everywhere in technical documentation, unfortunately.

I don't think it's boring. It's easy to come up with examples of the passive voice that aren't boring at all. It's everywhere in the best writing up to the 19th century. You just don't notice it when it's used well unless you're looking for it.

Consider:

> Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

This would not be improved by rewriting it as something like:

> Now the Confederacy has engaged us in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation whose founders conceived and dedicated it thus, can long endure.

This is not just longer but also weaker, because what if someone else is so conceiving and so dedicating the nation? The people who are still alive, for example, or the soldiers who just fought and died? The passive voice cleanly covers all these possibilities, rather than just committing the writer to a particular choice of who it is whose conception and dedication matters.

Moreover, and unexpectedly, the passive voice "we are engaged" takes responsibility for the struggle, while the active-voice rephrasing "the Confederacy has engaged us" seeks to evade responsibility, blaming the Rebs. While this might be factually more correct, it is unbefitting of a commander-in-chief attempting to rally popular support for victory.

(Plausibly the active-voice version is easier to understand, though, especially if your English is not very good, so the audience does matter.)

Or, consider this quote from Ecclesiastes:

> For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that which now is in the days to come shall all be forgotten.

You could rewrite it to eliminate the passive voice, but it's much worse:

> For there is no remembrance of the wise more than of the fool for ever; seeing that everyone shall forget all which now is in the days to come.

This forces you to present the ideas in the wrong order, instead of leaving "forgotten" for the resounding final as in the KJV version. And the explicit agent "everyone" adds nothing to the sentence; it was already obvious.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#108

Post by layer8 »

kragen wrote: post #30

I've found this to be one of the most useful ways to use (at least) GPT-4 for programming. Instead of telling it how an API works, I make it guess, maybe starting with some example code to which a feature needs to be added. Sometimes it comes up with a better approach than I had thought of. Then I change the API so that its code works. Conversely, I sometimes present it with some existing code and ask it what it does…

HDD — hallucination-driven development

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#109

Post by Veen »

plemer wrote: post #97
normie3000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with passive?

Passive voice often adds length, impedes flow, and subtracts the useful info of who is doing something. Examples: * Active - concise, complete info: The manager approved the proposal. * Passive - wordy, awkward: The proposal was approved by the manager. * Passive - missing info: The proposal was approved. [by who?] Most experienced writers will use active unless they have a specific reason not to, e.g., to emphasize…

I always like to share this when the passive voice comes up:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNRhI4Cc_QmsihIjUtqro3uBk...

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#110

Post by [deleted] »

suzzer99 wrote: post #53
kragen wrote: post #30

I've found this to be one of the most useful ways to use (at least) GPT-4 for programming. Instead of telling it how an API works, I make it guess, maybe starting with some example code to which a feature needs to be added. Sometimes it comes up with a better approach than I had thought of. Then I change the API so that its code works. Conversely, I sometimes present it with some existing code and ask it what it does…

> Sometimes it comes up with a better approach than I had thought of. IMO this has always been the killer use case for AI—from Google Maps to Grammarly. I discovered Grammarly at the very last phase of writing my book. I accepted maybe 1/3 of its suggestions, which is pretty damn good considering my book had already been edited by me dozens of times AND professionally copy-edited. But if I'd have accepted all of Gram…

[deleted]
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