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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

#191

Post by data-ottawa »

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…

This was a big problem starting out writing MCP servers for me.

Having an LLM demo your tool, then taking what it does wrong or uses incorrectly and adjusting the API works very very well. Updating the docs to instruct the LLM on how to use your tool does not work well.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#192

Post by ModernMech »

kragen wrote: post #180
jcranmer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the points already made" is what is known as the "bare passive", and yes, it is the passive voice. You can see e.g. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922 for a more thorough description of the passive voice. As I said elsewhere, one of the problems with the passive voice is that people are so bad at spotting it that they can at best only recognize it in its worst form, and assume that the forms that are less…

I'm not sure this is a "bare passive" like the beginning of "The day's work [being] done, they made their way back to the farmhouse," one of the bare-passive examples at your link. An analogous construction would be, "The points already [being] made, I ceased harassing the ignorant". But in "In addition to the points already made" this case "the point already made" is not a clause; it's a noun phrase, the object of t…

"In addition to the points that have already been made"

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#193

Post by data-ottawa »

kragen wrote: post #70
momojo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A light-weight anecdote: Many many python image-processing libraries have an `imread()` function. I didn't know about this when designing our own bespoke image-lib at work, and went with an esoteric `image_get()` that I never bothered to refactor. When I ask ChatGPT for help writing one-off scripts using the internal library I often forget to give it more context than just `import mylib` at the top, and it almost alw…

That's a perfect example! I wonder if changing it would be an improvement? If you can just replace image_get with imread in all the callers, maybe it would save your team mental effort and/or onboarding time in the future.

I strongly prefer `image_get/image_read` for clarity, but I would just stump in a method called `imread` which is functionally the same and hide it from the documentation.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#194

Post by suzzer99 »

jcranmer wrote: post #168
normie3000 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with passive?

There's nothing wrong with the passive voice. The problem is that many people have only a poor ability to recognize the passive voice in the first place. This results in the examples being clunky, wordy messes that are bad because they're, well, clunky and wordy, and not because they're passive--indeed, you've often got only a fifty-fifty chance of the example passive voice actually being passive in the first place.…

Active is generally more concise and engages the reader more. Of course there are exceptions, like everything.

Internet posts have a very different style standard than a book.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#195

Post by [deleted] »

jll29 wrote: post #169
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…

> The problem is executives want to completely remove humans from the loop, which almost universally leads to disastrous results Thanks for your words of wisdom, which touch on a very important other point I want to raise: often, we (i.e., developers, researchers) construct a technology that would be helpful and "net benign" if deployed as a tool for humans to use, instead of deploying it in order to replace humans.…

[deleted]

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#196

Post by dylan604 »

badlibrarian wrote: post #179
dylan604 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Passive - wordy, awkward: The proposal was approved by the manager. Oh the horror. There are 2 additional words "was" and "by". The weight of those two tiny little words is so so cumbersome I can't believe anyone would ever use those words. WTF??? wordy? awkward?

29% overhead (two of seven words) adds up.

great, someone can do math, but it is not awkward nor wordy.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#197

Post by lazyasciiart »

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.

You could improve this comment by rewriting it in the active voice, like this: “I am painfully bored by reading passive voice”.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#199

Post by suzzer99 »

badlibrarian wrote: post #179
dylan604 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Passive - wordy, awkward: The proposal was approved by the manager. Oh the horror. There are 2 additional words "was" and "by". The weight of those two tiny little words is so so cumbersome I can't believe anyone would ever use those words. WTF??? wordy? awkward?

29% overhead (two of seven words) adds up.

I reduced my manuscript by 2,000 words with Grammarly. At 500 pages, anything I could do to trim it down is a big plus.

Re: Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

#200

Post by [deleted] »

kragen wrote: post #180
jcranmer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the points already made" is what is known as the "bare passive", and yes, it is the passive voice. You can see e.g. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2922 for a more thorough description of the passive voice. As I said elsewhere, one of the problems with the passive voice is that people are so bad at spotting it that they can at best only recognize it in its worst form, and assume that the forms that are less…

I'm not sure this is a "bare passive" like the beginning of "The day's work [being] done, they made their way back to the farmhouse," one of the bare-passive examples at your link. An analogous construction would be, "The points already [being] made, I ceased harassing the ignorant". But in "In addition to the points already made" this case "the point already made" is not a clause; it's a noun phrase, the object of t…

[deleted]
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