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LLMs as the new high level language

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Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#261

Post by ThunderSizzle »

pjmlp wrote: post #256
manuelabeledo wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even those are way more predictable than LLMs, given the same input. But more importantly, LLMs aren’t stateless across executions, which is a huge no-no.

Are you certain to predict the JIT generated machine code given the JVM bytecode? Without taking anything else into account that the JIT uses on its decision tree?

Enough so that I've never had a runtime issue because the compiler did something odd once, and correct thr next time. At least in c#. If Java is doing that, then stop using it...

If the compiler had an issue like LLMs do, the half my builds would be broken, running the same source.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#262

Post by intrasight »

jug wrote: post #255
aurareturn wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we consider the prompts and LLM inputs to be the new source code, I want to see some assurance we get the same results every time. Give a spec to a designer or developer. Do you get the same result every time? I’m going to guess no. The results can vary wildly depending on the person. The code generated by LLMs will still be deterministic. What is different is the product team tools to create that product. At a…

This comparison holds up to me only in the long standing debate "LLMs as the new engineer", not "LLMs as a new programming language" (like here). I think there are important distinctions there, predictably one of them.

Even as a SSWE I do often wonder if I am but a high-level language.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#263

Post by [deleted] »

bonoboTP wrote: post #259
abcde666777 wrote: post #130

Are these kinds of articles a new breed of rage bait? They keep ending up on the front page with thriving comment sections, but in terms of content they're pretty low in nutritional value. So I'm guessing they just rise because they spark a debate?

This comment has even lower nutritional value. It's just a "dislike" with more words. You could have offered your counterarguments or if you're too tired of it but still feel you need to be heard, you could have linked to a previous comment or post of yours.

[deleted]

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#264

Post by asim »

I wouldn't call it the new high level language. It's a new JIT. But that's not doing it justice. There's a translation of natural language to a tokenizer and processor that's akin to the earliest days of CPUs. It's a huge step change from punch cards. But there's also a lot to learn. I think we will eventually develop a new language that's more efficient for processing or multiple layers of transformers. Tbh Google is leapfrogging everyone in this arena and eventually we're going to more exotic forms of modelling we've never seen before except in nature. But from an engineering perspective all I can see right now is a JIT.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#265

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

bonoboTP wrote: post #259
abcde666777 wrote: post #130

Are these kinds of articles a new breed of rage bait? They keep ending up on the front page with thriving comment sections, but in terms of content they're pretty low in nutritional value. So I'm guessing they just rise because they spark a debate?

This comment has even lower nutritional value. It's just a "dislike" with more words. You could have offered your counterarguments or if you're too tired of it but still feel you need to be heard, you could have linked to a previous comment or post of yours.

I mean, are you gonna die on a hill defending every low-quality content in HN? Because I think it’s perfectly OK to call it out so that moderators can notice and improve. You seem to think that readers have an inherent responsibility to salvage someone else’s bad article.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#267

Post by sarchertech »

orbital-decay wrote: post #134
sarchertech wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just about non-determinism, but about how chaotic LLMs are. A one word difference in a spec can and frequently does produce unrecognizably different output. If you are using an LLM as a high level language, that means that every time you make a slight change to anything and “recompile” all of the thousands upon thousands of unspecified implementation details are free to change. You could try to ameliorate th…

>It’s not just about non-determinism I'm very specifically addressing prompt reproducibility mentioned above, because it's a notorious red herring in these discussions. What you want is correctness, not determinism/reproducibility which is relatively trivial. (although thinking of it more, maybe not that trivial... if you want usable repro in the long run, you'll have to store the model snapshot, the inference code,…

Well if you want to use it as a high level language where you check in the spec and regenerate the code then prompt instability/chaotic output makes that infeasible.

You can’t just tell users “sorry there are a million tiny differences all over the app every time we change the slightest thing, that’s just the ambiguous nature of reality”.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#268

Post by sarchertech »

acuozzo wrote: post #172
sarchertech wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that what most languages compile to is much much more stable than what is produced by running a spec through an LLM. A language or a library might change the implementation of a sorting algorithm once in a few years. An LLM is likely to do it every time you regenerate the code. It’s not just a matter of non-determinism either, but about how chaotic LLMs are. Compilers can produce different machine c…

> A language or a library might change the implementation of a sorting algorithm once in a few years. I think GP was referring to heuristics and PGO.

That makes sense, but I was addressing more than just potential compiler non-determinism.

Re: LLMs as the new high level language

#270

Post by bonoboTP »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #265
bonoboTP wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment has even lower nutritional value. It's just a "dislike" with more words. You could have offered your counterarguments or if you're too tired of it but still feel you need to be heard, you could have linked to a previous comment or post of yours.

I mean, are you gonna die on a hill defending every low-quality content in HN? Because I think it’s perfectly OK to call it out so that moderators can notice and improve. You seem to think that readers have an inherent responsibility to salvage someone else’s bad article.

It's the top comment. But I'll disengage as this gets too meta. I'd encourage talking about the substance.
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