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Software is mostly all you need

softwarefordays.com

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Re: Software is mostly all you need

#41

Post by isodev »

boogrpants wrote: post #38
isodev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like people I understand that having model related vocabulary borrow similar words we use to describe human brains and cognition gets confusing. We are not the same, we don’t “learn” the same we certainly don’t use the knowledge we posses in the same way. The major difference between an LLM and a human is that as a human, I can look at your examples (which sound solid at first glance) and choose to truly “reas…

Obviously. You are not exactly the same as your nearest neighbor but have similar observable traits to outside observers. But since you end up trying to differentiate yourself from an LLM in vague, conceptual qualifiers, not empirical differences, what it means to "reason" ...I am left uncertain what you mean at all. An LLM can reject false assertions and generate false positives just like a human. Within a culture t…

I think I've read that book... but I distinctly remember the plot was a lot more engaging.

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#42

Post by nchagnet »

boogrpants wrote: post #38
isodev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like people I understand that having model related vocabulary borrow similar words we use to describe human brains and cognition gets confusing. We are not the same, we don’t “learn” the same we certainly don’t use the knowledge we posses in the same way. The major difference between an LLM and a human is that as a human, I can look at your examples (which sound solid at first glance) and choose to truly “reas…

Obviously. You are not exactly the same as your nearest neighbor but have similar observable traits to outside observers. But since you end up trying to differentiate yourself from an LLM in vague, conceptual qualifiers, not empirical differences, what it means to "reason" ...I am left uncertain what you mean at all. An LLM can reject false assertions and generate false positives just like a human. Within a culture t…

> While LLMs have massive valuations right now. Pretty sure the public has spoken when it comes to the differences you fail to illustrate actually mattering.

Are you seriously using market valuation as an indicator of worth?

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#43

Post by pegasus »

geraneum wrote: post #28
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here here. Code has uniquely an incredible volume of data. And incredibly good ways to assess & test it's weights, to immediately find out of its headed the right way on the gradient.

> And incredibly good ways to assess & test it's weights What weights are you referring to? How does [Claude?] code do that

Look into RLVR (Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards). It happens during model post-training.

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#44

Post by boogrpants »

nchagnet wrote: post #42
boogrpants wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously. You are not exactly the same as your nearest neighbor but have similar observable traits to outside observers. But since you end up trying to differentiate yourself from an LLM in vague, conceptual qualifiers, not empirical differences, what it means to "reason" ...I am left uncertain what you mean at all. An LLM can reject false assertions and generate false positives just like a human. Within a culture t…

> While LLMs have massive valuations right now. Pretty sure the public has spoken when it comes to the differences you fail to illustrate actually mattering. Are you seriously using market valuation as an indicator of worth?

[dead]

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#45

Post by [deleted] »

isodev wrote: post #41
boogrpants wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously. You are not exactly the same as your nearest neighbor but have similar observable traits to outside observers. But since you end up trying to differentiate yourself from an LLM in vague, conceptual qualifiers, not empirical differences, what it means to "reason" ...I am left uncertain what you mean at all. An LLM can reject false assertions and generate false positives just like a human. Within a culture t…

I think I've read that book... but I distinctly remember the plot was a lot more engaging.

[deleted]

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#46

Post by jbmilgrom »

daxfohl wrote: post #35
jbmilgrom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's right, and agents turning specs into software can go in all sorts of directions especially when we don't control the input. what we've done to mitigate is essentially backing every entrypoint (customer comment, internal ticket, etc) with a remote claude code session with persistent memory - that session essentially becomes the expert in the case. And we've developed checkpoints that work from experience (e.g.…

Ooh, it sounds like you've already got most of the groundwork done for something I was wondering about yesterday: I'd love it if there was some way during an incident, for some system to pull all the PRs included in the latest release, check which agents worked on them (i.e. line in the commit message with an identifier that corresponds to the agent's LLM context and any other data at the time of commit), "rehydrate"…

totally, it's like ai-native github with some linear plus some ability to push the ball forward autonomously. This doesn't exist yet so we had to build a version internally, but also we built it pretty specifically for our needs. The general version might have to be more componentized, not sure. We also as an industry probably need some version control protocol above git that includes all the history around the commit so we don't have to string together root cause documents and conversation history in s3 linked via relational entities in psql.

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#47

Post by boogrpants »

isodev wrote: post #41
boogrpants wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously. You are not exactly the same as your nearest neighbor but have similar observable traits to outside observers. But since you end up trying to differentiate yourself from an LLM in vague, conceptual qualifiers, not empirical differences, what it means to "reason" ...I am left uncertain what you mean at all. An LLM can reject false assertions and generate false positives just like a human. Within a culture t…

I think I've read that book... but I distinctly remember the plot was a lot more engaging.

[dead]

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#48

Post by jauntywundrkind »

geraneum wrote: post #28
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here here. Code has uniquely an incredible volume of data. And incredibly good ways to assess & test it's weights, to immediately find out of its headed the right way on the gradient.

> And incredibly good ways to assess & test it's weights What weights are you referring to? How does [Claude?] code do that

The hidden virtual weights in reality.

Which are often complex & multi-faceted, measuring the rest of reality's weighing, to make broad judgement with. Reality's normal context window is a google deep for even the most everyday of circumstance. The weights exist there, but amid too broad a reality with too many factors for that exacting a use, and are too complected to measure out individually easily.

Code is simple. It's context is limited to what it is. To ascertainable viewable realities that mankind has already distilled out, into the form of systems and code.

And like relativity, we can measure the curvature of space around these weights, can envision how space bends and attracts. And now set in motion our own bodies, to orbit on nicely composed courses.

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#49

Post by verdverm »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #20
rybosworld wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's also true of people but we are kinder to each other and ourselves when judgement is bad. How many times have you been in a conversation where you asked the wrong question or stated the wrong thing because you either weren't 100% listening (no one is), or you forgot, or you didn't connect the same dots that others did?

> I think that's also true of people Reductionist positions seem to always pop up in these threads.

That's just humans everywhere, in all of time

It takes effort to be better about it, don't expect perfection from yourself or others

Re: Software is mostly all you need

#50

Post by cadamsdotcom »

There’s something interesting here around when to write code, when to reuse code, and when to replace the code that was written.

Browser use could be improved by being partly done with code and part genetically.. completing tasks on the web is deceptive because it seems easily codifiable (just have the model write some Playwright code!) while actually being gnarly as hell. What if the page has changed completely since last visit?

It’d be interesting to let the agent build up a library of code that it can reuse if it feels confident that will get the job done, while feeding back any error to let the agent debug.. and that might lead to it writing a new routine to stick in the library, possibly replacing the old one.

Seems like something today’s models could be made to do with a bit of work in the harness. Anyone tried anything like this?

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