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Human coders are still better than LLMs

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Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#271

Post by gitaarik »

JoshCole wrote: post #230
1718627440 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the claim, that it will never make up "C"?

They don't claim that. They say LLMs only generate text someone has written. Another way you could refute their premise was by showing the existence of AI-created programs for which someone isn't a valid description of the writer (e.g., from evolutionary algorithms) then training a network on that data such that it can output it. It is just as trivial a way to prove that the premise is false. Your claim here is sligh…

I think it's not just token support, it's also having a understanding of certain concepts that allows you to arrive at new points like C, D, E, etc. But LLM's don't have an understanding of things, they are statistical models that predict what statistically is most likely following the input that you give it. But that that will always be based on already existing data that is fed into the model. It can produce "new" stuff only by combining the "old" stuff in new ways, but it can't "think" of something entirety conceptionally new, because it doesn't really "think".

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#272

Post by crazygringo »

p1necone wrote: post #267
mattnewton wrote: post #5

This matches my experience. I actually think a fair amount of value from LLM assistants to me is having a reasonably intelligent rubber duck to talk to. Now the duck can occasionally disagree and sometimes even refine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging I think the big question everyone wants to skip right to and past this conversation is, will this continue to be true 2 years from now? I don’t kno…

> the duck can occasionally disagree This has not been my experience. LLMs have definitely been helpful, but generally they either give you the right answer or invent something plausible sounding but incorrect. If I tell it what I'm doing I always get breathless praise, never "that doesn't sound right, try this instead."

That's not my experience. I routinely get a polite "that might not be the optimal solution, have you considered..." when I'm asking whether I should do something X way with Y technology.

Of course it has to be something the LLM actually has lots of material it's trained with. It won't work with anything remotely cutting-edge, but of course that's not what LLM's are for.

But it's been incredibly helpful for me in figuring out the best, easiest, most idiomatic ways of using libraries or parts of libraries I'm not very familiar with.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#273

Post by cogogo »

foxyv wrote: post #69
marcosdumay wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a damning assertive duck, completely out of proportion to its competence. I've seen enough people led astray by talking to it.

Same here. When I'm teaching coding I've noticed that LLMs will confuse the heck out of students. They will accept what it suggests without realizing that it is suggesting nonsense.

I’m self taught and don’t code that much but I feel like I benefit a ton from LLMs giving me specific answers to questions that would take me a lot of time to figure out with documentation and stack overflow. Or even generating snippets that I can evaluate whether or not will work.

But I actually can’t imagine how you can teach someone to code if they have access to an LLM from day one. It’s too easy to take the easy route and you lose the critical thinking and problem solving skills required to code in the first place and to actually make an LLM useful in the second. Best of luck to you… it’s a weird time for a lot of things.

*edit them/they

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#274

Post by 9dev »

palmotea wrote: post #231
nialse wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, the “don’t disturb the status quo” argument. See, we are all working on our replacement, newer versions, products, services and knowledge always make the older obsolete. It is wise to work on your replacement, and even wiser to be in charge of and operate the replacement.

> It is wise to work on your replacement... Depends on the context. You have to keep in mind: it is not a goal of our society or economic system to provide you with a stable, rewarding job. In fact, the incentives are to take that away from you ASAP. Before software engineers go celebrate this tech, they need realize they're going to end up like rust-belt factory workers the day after the plant closed. They're not sp…

Speak for your own society, then. It should absolutely be our shared goal to keep as many people in stable, rewarding employment; if not for compassion, then at least pure egoism—it’s a lot more interesting to be surrounded by happy, educated people than an angry, poor mob.

Don’t let cynics rule your country. Go vote. There’s no rule that things have to stay awful.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#275

Post by 9dev »

pandastronaut wrote: post #145
malfist wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was also one of the challenges during the offshoring craze in the 00s. The offshore teams did not have the power, or knowledge to push back on things and just built and built and built. Sounds very similar to AI right? Probably going to have the same outcome.

I tend to see today's AI Vibrators as the managers of the 00s and their army of offshore devs.

Did you actually mean to say AI Vibrators?

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#276

Post by reducesuffering »

bgwalter wrote: post #80
am17an wrote: post #67

All the world's smartest minds are racing towards replacing themselves. As programmers, we should take note and see where the wind is blowing. At least don't discard the possibility and rather be prepared for the future. Not to sound like a tin-foil hat but odds of achieving something like this increase by the day. In the long term (post AGI), the only safe white-collar jobs would be those built on data which is not…

The Nobel prize is said to have been created partly out of guilt over having invented dynamite, which was obviously used in a destructive manner. Now we have Geoffrey Hinton getting the prize for contributing to one of the most destructive inventions ever.

At least he and Yoshua Bengio are remorseful. Many others haven't even gotten that far...

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#277

Post by platevoltage »

9dev wrote: post #275
pandastronaut wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to see today's AI Vibrators as the managers of the 00s and their army of offshore devs.

Did you actually mean to say AI Vibrators ?

Give it 3 months. There will be an AI Vibrator on the market, if there isn't one already.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#278

Post by mreid »

9dev wrote: post #275
pandastronaut wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tend to see today's AI Vibrators as the managers of the 00s and their army of offshore devs.

Did you actually mean to say AI Vibrators ?

I'm guessing it is a derogatory pun, alluding to vibe coders.

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#279

Post by AstroBen »

lyu07282 wrote: post #265
AstroBen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately this needs to be solved politically Making our work more efficient, or humans redundant should be really exciting. It's not set in stone that we need to leave people middle aged with families and now completely unable to earn enough to provide a good life Hopefully if it happens, it happens to such a huge amount of people that it forces a change

But that already happened to lots of industries and lots of people, we never cared before about them, now it's us so we care, but nothing is different about us. Just learn to code!

The difference is in how many industries AI is threatening. It's not just coding on the chopping block

Re: Human coders are still better than LLMs

#280

Post by bdbenton5255 »

loudmax wrote: post #83

Companies that leverage LLMs and AIs to let their employees be more productive will thrive. Companies that try to replace their employees with LLMs and AIs will fail. Unfortunately, all that's in the long run. In the near term, some CEOs and management teams will profit from the short term valuations as they squander their companies' future growth on short-sighted staff cuts.

That's really it. These tools are useful as assistants to programmers but do not replace an actual programmer. The right course is to embrace the technology moderately rather than reject it completely or bet on it replacing workers.
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