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Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

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Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#131

Post by slopinthebag »

suttontom wrote: post #105
lich_king wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In practice this still doesn't mean 50 % of white collar can't be automated though. Let me ask you this, though: if we wanted to, what percentage of white collar jobs could have been automated or eliminated prior to LLMs? Meta has nearly 80k employees to basically run two websites and three mobile apps. There were 18k people working at LinkedIn! Many big tech companies are massive job programs with some product on…

This is unfair and dismissive of many roles. Coordination in a massive, technically complex company that has to adhere to laws and regulations is a critical role. I don't get why people shit on certain roles (I'm a SWE). Our PgMs reduce friction and help us be more productive and focused. Technical writers produce customer-facing content and code, and have nothing to do with supporting internal bureaucracy. There are…

It's also because as you increase organisational complexity, you need to manage it somehow, which generally means hiring more people to do that. And then you need to hire people to manage those new managers. Ad infinitum. The increased complexity begets more complexity.

It sort of reminds me of The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph Tainter. These companies are their own microcosms of a complex society and I bet we will see mass layoffs in the future, not from AI but from those companies collapsing into a more sustainable state.

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#132

Post by kqr »

maest wrote: post #130
thesz wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> until all potential sources of error are close to being eliminated This is what PSP/TSP did - one has to (continually) review its' own work to identify most frequent sources of (user facing) defects. > if you also want to predict future performance, you need to break it down into smaller components and track each of them individually. This is also one of tenets of PSP/TSP. If you have a task with estimate longer th…

What is PSP/TSP?

One of many ways people have branded the idea of process improvement for software engineering.

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#133

Post by globular-toast »

I reckon LLM merge rates will go up, but not necessarily due to quality improvements. Instead I think maintainers will just become fatigued. The amount of code I'm expected to review now is way higher than before. And while I'm reviewing you know more is being generated. I'm sure I've let through more crap due to this fatigue attack on me.

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#134

Post by globular-toast »

BoppreH wrote: post #71

Controversial opinion from a casual user, but state-of-art LLMs now feel to me more intelligent then the average person on the steet. Also explains why training on more average-quality data (if there's any left) is not making improvements. But LLMs are hamstrung by their harnesses. They are doing the equivalent of providing technical support via phone call: little to no context, and limited to a bidirectional stream…

It's so disrespectful to say an LLM is more intelligent than a person on the street. The LLM has nothing at stake, cares not a sausage about the consequences of what it spits out. People have all kinds of pressures, dependants, and personal issues like health. Our thoughts and actions have real consequences. It's so easy to be intelligent when you're the pretend human that gets switched on for five minutes then switched off again.

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#135

Post by Lionga »

furyofantares wrote: post #114
jygg4 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with llm’s is trust. I don’t see that ever going away. Humans have learned to trust other humans over a large time scale with rules in place to control behaviour.

When the dust settles, for example if LLM's were to stop improving today, we would come to learn their exact capabilities, what they can do reliably and what they can't. Once we know what they can do well and how to get them to do it well, and what they can't, you could say we "trust" them to do the first category well and just stop trying to get it to do the second category.

LLMs are random by nature, they might something done one time but miserably fail the next

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#136

Post by cicko »

jygg4 wrote: post #78
orwin wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People say AI is “good at front end” I only say that because I'm a shit frontend dev. Honestly, I'm not that bad anymore, but I'm still shit, and the AI will probably generate better code than I will.

As long as humans are needed to review code, it sounds your role evolves toward prompting and reviewing. Which is akin to driving a car - the motor vehicle itself doesn’t know where to go. It requires you to prompt via steering and braking etc, and then to review what is happening in response. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - reviewing code ultimately matters most. As long as what is produced is more often than n…

I don't think that reviewing code is so important as reviewing results. Nobody is reviewing the IL or assembly code when they write in higher level languages. It's the end result that matters in most cases.

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#137

Post by ahtihn »

lich_king wrote: post #109
suttontom wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unfair and dismissive of many roles. Coordination in a massive, technically complex company that has to adhere to laws and regulations is a critical role. I don't get why people shit on certain roles (I'm a SWE). Our PgMs reduce friction and help us be more productive and focused. Technical writers produce customer-facing content and code, and have nothing to do with supporting internal bureaucracy. There are…

You realize that the reason you need to manage this organizational complexity is largely because the organization is so huge?... The reality is that you could run LinkedIn with far, far fewer people. You probably need fewer than 100 for core engineering, and likely less than 1,000 overall if you include compliance, sales, and so on - especially since a lot of overseas compliance stuff is outsourced to consulting firm…

And how much revenue did that company bring in compared to something like Meta?

Maybe there's a correlation there?

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#138

Post by rienbdj »

cicko wrote: post #136
jygg4 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as humans are needed to review code, it sounds your role evolves toward prompting and reviewing. Which is akin to driving a car - the motor vehicle itself doesn’t know where to go. It requires you to prompt via steering and braking etc, and then to review what is happening in response. That’s not necessarily a bad thing - reviewing code ultimately matters most. As long as what is produced is more often than n…

I don't think that reviewing code is so important as reviewing results. Nobody is reviewing the IL or assembly code when they write in higher level languages. It's the end result that matters in most cases.

But those are close to deterministic.

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#139

Post by kreyenborgi »

jmalicki wrote: post #110
lich_king wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In practice this still doesn't mean 50 % of white collar can't be automated though. Let me ask you this, though: if we wanted to, what percentage of white collar jobs could have been automated or eliminated prior to LLMs? Meta has nearly 80k employees to basically run two websites and three mobile apps. There were 18k people working at LinkedIn! Many big tech companies are massive job programs with some product on…

Meta has 80k employees to run the world's most massive engine of commerce through advertising and matching consumers to products. They build generative AI tools so people can make ads more easily. They have some of the most sophisticated tracking out there. They have shadow profiles on nearly everyone. Have you visited a website? You have a shadow profile even if you don't have a Facebook account. They know who your…

So like parent said, mostly bs jobs that would improve the product if removed

Re: Are LLM merge rates not getting better?

#140

Post by Mielin »

ForHackernews wrote: post #104
Bombthecat wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how the public perceive it though. It's useless and never gets better until it suddenly, unexpecty got good enough.

My robo-chauffer kept crashing into different things until one day he didn't.

Robot vacuum is allowed to crash into things and is still quite useful. You add bumpers, maybe some sort of proximity sensors to make the crash less damaging. It is safe by construction - cant harm humans because it is too small.

Things have improved a bit? Now robot shelves becomes a possibility. Map everything, use more sensors, designate humans to a particular area only. Still quite useful. It is safe by design of areas, where humans rarely walk among robots.

Improved further? Now we can do food delivery service robot. Slow down a bit, use much more sensors, think extra hard how to make it safer. Add a flag on a flagpole. Rounded body. Collisions are probably going to happen. Make the robot lighter than humans so that robot gets more damage than the human in a collision. Humans are vulnerable to falling over - make the robot hight just right to grab onto to regain balance, somewhere near waist hight.

Something like that... Now I wish this would be an actual progress requirement for a robo taxy company to do before they start releasing robo taxies onto our streets. But at least we do it as mankind, algorithm improvements, safety solutuon still benefit the whole chain. And benefit to humanity grows despite it being not quite good enough for one particular task.

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