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What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

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Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#31

Post by carapace »

layer8 wrote: post #5
skadamat wrote: post #2

This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher ). All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay

He always criticizes how everyone got computing wrong (fair enough), but never offers anything but the most vague suggestions of how to do things differently.

You are impressively wrong. He just wrapped up an incredible research program that demonstrated many concrete implementations of great computing ideas.

> After 16 years of continuous research and important contributions toward its mission - "Improve 'powerful ideas education' for the world's children and to advance the state of systems research and personal computing" - Viewpoints Research Institute concluded its operations at the beginning of 2018.

http://www.vpri.org/

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#32

Post by bongodongobob »

samatman wrote: post #30
bongodongobob wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but it sounds like you're using ChatGPT3.5. I get very very few invented libraries unless it's a very specific version of an old or rare language. I tried your "ING" example and GPT4 got 100/100. Idk, ymmv, but GPT4 beats the pants off of 3.5.

I use GPT4 and it confabulates constantly. Try it on a language in the 10th-20th range of popularity (let alone lower) and I expect you'll see it as well. I don't see that as often with Python, the only top-5 language I currently work with.

Right, that's my experience as well. Python, C, C++, bash, PowerShell, etc, are all pretty much spot on 95/% of the time. It will start to fumble if I specify PS 4.0, or Python 2, C89, etc. Or use X language but don't use popular library Y.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#33

Post by lucianbr »

mempko wrote: post #25

I see a lot of people here are missing his "big deal" which he talks about in the end where he references the "Spaceship Earth" problem. What I believe he is getting at is people are going to use LLMs to build systems at scale to further strip mine society. The "Spaceship Earth" problem is a reference to Limits to Growth. For those who haven't read "Limits to Growth", and the more recent Re-calibration of Limits to G…

Most tech seems to be used, at least amongst other things, to further strip mine society. It's the extreme of wealth accumulation, and there's always some people wanting to do that. Microsoft uses the idea of personal computers to get a monopoly on OSes, and get as much rent with that. Google and Amazon use the internet. Apple the iPhone with the walled garden. OPEC uses oil to extract as much wealth as possible. Toyota and VW would also get a monopoly and then raise prices it if they could. Why do you think VW bought so many other car makers? Boeing now that it is too big to fail, focuses on making more money, and less safety and excellence in engineering. Everyone does it. Well, every big business.

It's a bad thing for sure, but doesn't seem specific to LLMs, and a solution would not be specific either.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#34

Post by joshmarinacci »

layer8 wrote: post #5
skadamat wrote: post #2

This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher ). All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay

He always criticizes how everyone got computing wrong (fair enough), but never offers anything but the most vague suggestions of how to do things differently.

His entire 60 year career is a suggestion of how to do things differently. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Kay

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#35

Post by joshmarinacci »

layer8 wrote: post #16
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did tho. He mentioned more than once that OOP was more about message passing than behavior + state.

Yes, that’s what I mean by vague suggestions. How do you actually build and maintain a system of any complexity with that? How do you ensure it will do what it is supposed to do? And Smalltalk wasn’t that, it is mostly just regular method calls and not “message passing”.

Smalltalk is definitely message passing. There are many ways to intercept the messages and implement different responses. This one mechanism enables: network aware code, object proxies, sub-classing, on-the-fly code generation, and lots of other behavior. Traditional methods were invented later as less robust version of Smalltalk's message passing.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#36

Post by chongli »

layer8 wrote: post #16
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did tho. He mentioned more than once that OOP was more about message passing than behavior + state.

Yes, that’s what I mean by vague suggestions. How do you actually build and maintain a system of any complexity with that? How do you ensure it will do what it is supposed to do? And Smalltalk wasn’t that, it is mostly just regular method calls and not “message passing”.

He’s not just a proponent of message passing, he’s a proponent of late binding [1]. The idea there is to have a running image of the environment and interact with it in real time, updating code while it’s running (no recompiling or anything like that). The idea is a high level of interactivity with very tight feedback loops.

A whole operating system like this would allow you to hack on the user interface and change things on the fly. All of your software would also work like this, promoting open extensibility by the user. You ought to be able to click on any window or other user interface element and be able to view and modify the running code live, without even restarting the computation it’s running (never mind the whole program or even rebooting the computer).

This sort of ability to do live hacking on the internals of what you’re working with is how computers used to work in those early days. It’s also how machinery has always worked in the past. A mechanic could lock in the timing of an engine by rotating the distributor cap and listening to how smoothly it fires.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late_binding

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#37

Post by MisterTea »

layer8 wrote: post #27
Xelynega wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erlang(and more modernly elixir/Gleam) are an example of this in practice, and were created to make it easier to ensure the working and manage the complexity of large systems.

Fair enough. But Alan Kay doesn’t say “use Erlang”, nor does he go into any depths about what the desirable feature set is and what would make it work or would fail to make it work. He’s always just waxing around nebulous desiderata and complaining about the status quo.

Maybe because there is no one/right/simple answer. You really have to think for yourself and seek out answers instead of expecting them. You're doing that now but with the mistaken impression you were to be handed them.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#38

Post by mempko »

lucianbr wrote: post #33
mempko wrote: post #25

I see a lot of people here are missing his "big deal" which he talks about in the end where he references the "Spaceship Earth" problem. What I believe he is getting at is people are going to use LLMs to build systems at scale to further strip mine society. The "Spaceship Earth" problem is a reference to Limits to Growth. For those who haven't read "Limits to Growth", and the more recent Re-calibration of Limits to G…

Most tech seems to be used, at least amongst other things, to further strip mine society. It's the extreme of wealth accumulation, and there's always some people wanting to do that. Microsoft uses the idea of personal computers to get a monopoly on OSes, and get as much rent with that. Google and Amazon use the internet. Apple the iPhone with the walled garden. OPEC uses oil to extract as much wealth as possible. Toy…

It's not specific to LLMs, but the point is LLMs will make things more efficient and therefore make 'a bigger straw' to drink the milkshake.

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#39

Post by agumonkey »

layer8 wrote: post #5
skadamat wrote: post #2

This answer is amazing and classically Alan Kay! There's so much here to unpack because of all the different areas Alan draws from in his work (he's like a computing philosopher ). All I will say is that for people who want to understand his perspective, there's a large epistemological load to overcome. Sampling his talks is a good starting point though: https://tinlizzie.org/IA/index.php/Talks_by_Alan_Kay

He always criticizes how everyone got computing wrong (fair enough), but never offers anything but the most vague suggestions of how to do things differently.

one real experiment he contributed to was VPRI ometa and the os built on top of that (every part of the OS built on top of an eDSL)

Re: What does Alan Kay think about LLMs?

#40

Post by agumonkey »

mempko wrote: post #14
layer8 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He always criticizes how everyone got computing wrong (fair enough), but never offers anything but the most vague suggestions of how to do things differently.

What? He literally built systems that did things differently. Look at smalltalk.

I think I get what parent means, Kay is mostly seen in conference mode, with simplified slides and big ideas, it's frustrating if you never saw who he got taught or worked with.
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