Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 880 posts

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#391

Post by kouru225 »

roxolotl wrote: post #343
kouru225 wrote: post #341

Ever since AI came out I’ve been talking about the prompt to output ratio. We naturally assume that the prompt will be smaller than the output just because of the particulars of the systems we use, but as you get more and more particular of what you want, the prompt grows while the output stays the same size. This is logical. If instead of writing an essay, I just describe what I want the essay to say, the descriptio…

This is why it’s unlikely these systems will effectively replace software development. By the time you’ve specified the novel system you want to build well enough in English such that you get exactly the system you want you might as well have written the code.

Yep. To put it another way: In a scenario where you want to say something, you can’t outsource what you want to say to anyone. It doesn’t matter whether or not you want to say it in code or if you want to say it in English.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#392

Post by arealaccount »

jsheard wrote: post #74

I'm far from the first to make this observation but LLMs are like anti-compression algorithms when used like that, a simple idea gets expanded into a bloated mess by an LLM, then sent to someone else who runs it through another LLM to summarize it back to something approximating the original prompt. Nobody benefits aside from Sam Altman and co, who get to pocket a cool $0.000000001 for enabling this pointless exercis…

I think they actually lose the $0.000001

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#393

Post by Suppafly »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #358
jameshart wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve come across this analogy that I think works well: Using an LLM to do schoolwork is like taking a forklift to the gym. If all we were interested in was moving the weights around, you’d be right to use a tool to help you. But we’re doing this work for the effect it will have on you . The reason a teacher asks you a question is not because they don’t know the answer.

If students went to college only to learn, colleges wouldn't bother giving diplomas. Compare: My piano teacher doesn't give diplomas because none of her students would care, her students actually want to learn. When my piano teacher cancels class, I am disappointed because I wanted to learn. My piano teacher doesn't need to threaten me with bad grades to get me to practice outside of class (analogous to homework), be…

I don't think that's a good comparison. I went college to learn and was also relieved occasionally when professors canceled class and still had to force myself to study. I'm sure plenty of your piano teachers students don't enjoy practicing the same notes over and over but do so because they want to know how to play piano.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#394

Post by shawn-butler »

mschuster91 wrote: post #360
bumby wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is part of a more general cultural shift. Back in the 1960s, the majority of students said the primary motivation for going to college was to develop a philosophy of life, and a minority said the main goal was to be very financially successful. Somewhere around the 1980s this started to shift and the proportions are now inverted. * according to the UCLA CIRP freshman survey

> Somewhere around the 1980s this started to shift and the proportions are now inverted. Yeah, that's when the great "push for education" came, as well as neoliberalism which preached continuous hustling and individuality. And in the 90s, the ADA and other anti discrimination laws hit, and requiring a college degree was and still is a very useful pre-screening filter for HR to continue discrimination.

It's also as I recall when tuition and student costs started to spike in the US which is probably more directly related than some "philosophical" change in the zeitgeist[0]. When students and parents start racking up debt like this, you become very interested in the fastest way to pay it back.

For me the impact of the university administrators as they chased higher endowments for more buildings with naming rights and expanded their own bureaucracies with direct hires that did not directly contribute to the faculty mission did more to alter the university experience than anything else.

[0]: https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#395

Post by jama211 »

roxolotl wrote: post #343
kouru225 wrote: post #341

Ever since AI came out I’ve been talking about the prompt to output ratio. We naturally assume that the prompt will be smaller than the output just because of the particulars of the systems we use, but as you get more and more particular of what you want, the prompt grows while the output stays the same size. This is logical. If instead of writing an essay, I just describe what I want the essay to say, the descriptio…

This is why it’s unlikely these systems will effectively replace software development. By the time you’ve specified the novel system you want to build well enough in English such that you get exactly the system you want you might as well have written the code.

Well… you’re forgetting the part where you can cut out the middleman. Currently a leader has to ask an engineer to build a system, and has to communicate effectively with the engineer until all of the novel details have been ironed out in the specification, and _y_ the engineer builds it.

In a world where the LLM can do the building, the engineer is no longer required.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#396

Post by jama211 »

Animats wrote: post #28

That's because the instructor is asking questions that merely require the student to regurgitate the instructor's text. To actually teach this, you do something like this: "Here's a little dummy robot arm made out of Tinkertoys. There are three angular joints, a rotating base, a shoulder, and an elbow. Each one has a protractor so you can see the angle. 1. Figure out where the end of the arm will be based on those th…

Very well said. It’s a bad assignment! Is 1 student does something like this maybe they’re wrong, but if 90% of students are doing this, then IMO the assignment is wrong.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#397

Post by jama211 »

nairadithya wrote: post #339
myth2018 wrote: post #330

> Anecdotally, this phenomenon seems more common among English-as-a-second-language speakers That part caught my attention. As an English-as-a-second-language speaker myself, I find it so difficult to develop any form of "taste" in English the same way I have in my mother tongue. A badly written sentence in my mother tongue feels painful in a sort of physical way, while bad English usually sound OK to me, especially…

Reading good literature helps you develop that sense fairly quickly.

This is a pretty unhelpful response to be honest

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#398

Post by godelski »

MengerSponge wrote: post #383
ChadNauseam wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If students went to college only to learn, colleges wouldn't bother giving diplomas. Compare: My piano teacher doesn't give diplomas because none of her students would care, her students actually want to learn. When my piano teacher cancels class, I am disappointed because I wanted to learn. My piano teacher doesn't need to threaten me with bad grades to get me to practice outside of class (analogous to homework), be…

This is, famously, why nobody gets a degree in fine arts. (/s) Your piano teacher does not give a diploma because she is not offering a university education. If she worked with a few other experts and they designed a coordinated curriculum and shepherded students through it over the course of two to four years, and documented that process to the point where they could file with an accrediting agency, then she could i…

  > then she could issue a degree in piano.
It's worth noting, plenty of universities do this. You can get a degree "in piano".

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#399

Post by markusde »

Preach about the bullet points. I was grading some assignments a while ago and by some mysterious coincidence like a third of the answers were written in this strange bullet point format listing the the same 3 ideas.

The punchline? Bullet point 3 was wrong (it was a PL assignment and I'm 99% sure the AI was picking up on the word macro and regurgitating facts abut LISP). 0 points all around, better luck next time.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#400

Post by rohansood15 »

ChadNauseam wrote: post #358
jameshart wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve come across this analogy that I think works well: Using an LLM to do schoolwork is like taking a forklift to the gym. If all we were interested in was moving the weights around, you’d be right to use a tool to help you. But we’re doing this work for the effect it will have on you . The reason a teacher asks you a question is not because they don’t know the answer.

If students went to college only to learn, colleges wouldn't bother giving diplomas. Compare: My piano teacher doesn't give diplomas because none of her students would care, her students actually want to learn. When my piano teacher cancels class, I am disappointed because I wanted to learn. My piano teacher doesn't need to threaten me with bad grades to get me to practice outside of class (analogous to homework), be…

Students want the diploma because it has value. It has value because a student can only get it by learning and problem-solving.

If students find a way to get a diploma without doing the work, it will soon be worth less than the paper on which it is printed.

Post reply on HN