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Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

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Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#411

Post by solaire_oa »

miki123211 wrote: post #38
karpathy wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of say it in words (agreeing with you) but I agree the versioning is a bit confusing analogy because it usually additionally implies some kind of improvement. When I’m just trying to distinguish them as very different software categories.

What do you think about structured outputs / JSON mode / constrained decoding / whatever you wish to call it? To me, it's a criminally underused tool. While "raw" LLMs are cool, they're annoying to use as anything but chatbots, as their output is unpredictable and basically impossible to parse programmatically. Structured outputs solve that problem neatly. In a way, they're "neural networks without the training". The…

I also think that structured outputs are criminally underused, but it isn't perfect... and per your example, it might not even be good, because I've done something similar.

I was trying to make a decent cocktail recipe database, and scraped the text of cocktails from about 1400 webpages. Note that this was just the text of the cocktail recipe, and cocktail recipes are comparatively small. I sent the text to an LLM for JSON structuring, and the LLM routinely miscategorized liquor types. It also failed to normalize measurements with explicit instructions and the temperature set to zero. I gave up.

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#412

Post by doug_durham »

mythrwy wrote: post #402
blixt wrote: post #394

If we extrapolate these points about building tools for AI and letting the AI turn prompts into code I can’t help but reach the conclusion that future programming languages and their runtimes will be heavily influenced by the strengths and weaknesses of LLMs. What would the code of an application look like if it was optimized to be efficiently used by LLMs and not humans? * While LLMs do heavily tend towards expectin…

It does seem a bit silly long term to have something like Python which was developed as a human friendly language written by LLMs. If AI is going to write all the code going forward, we can probably dispense with the user friendly part and just make everything efficient as possible for machines.

I don't agree. Important code will need to be audited. I think the language of the future will be easy to read by human reviewers but deterministic. It won't be a human language. Instead it will be computer language with horrible ergonomics. I think Python or straight up Java would be a good start. Things like templates wouldn't be necessary since you could express that deterministically in a higher level syntax (e.g. A list of elements that can accept any type). It would be an interesting exercise.

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#413

Post by mostlysimilar »

mythrwy wrote: post #402
blixt wrote: post #394

If we extrapolate these points about building tools for AI and letting the AI turn prompts into code I can’t help but reach the conclusion that future programming languages and their runtimes will be heavily influenced by the strengths and weaknesses of LLMs. What would the code of an application look like if it was optimized to be efficiently used by LLMs and not humans? * While LLMs do heavily tend towards expectin…

It does seem a bit silly long term to have something like Python which was developed as a human friendly language written by LLMs. If AI is going to write all the code going forward, we can probably dispense with the user friendly part and just make everything efficient as possible for machines.

If humans don't understand it to write the data the LLM is trained on, how will the LLM be able to learn it?

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#414

Post by kordlessagain »

practal wrote: post #50

Great talk, thanks for putting it online so quickly. I liked the idea of making the generation / verification loop go brrr, and one way to do this is to make verification not just a human task, but a machine task, where possible. Yes, I am talking about formal verification, of course! That also goes nicely together with "keeping the AI on a tight leash". It seems to clash though with "English is the new programming l…

This thread perfectly captures what Karpathy was getting at. We're witnessing a fundamental shift where the interface to computing is changing from formal syntax to natural language. But you can see people struggling to let go of the formal foundations they've built their careers on.

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#415

Post by kordlessagain »

darqis wrote: post #193

when I started coding at the age of 11 in machine code and assembly on the C64, the dream was to create software that creates software. Nowadays it's almost reality, almost because the devil is always in the details. When you're used to write code, writing code is relatively fast. You need this knowledge to debug issues with generated code. However you're now telling AI to fix the bugs in the generated code. I see it…

Kids? Think about all the domain experts, entrepreneurs, researchers, designers, and creative people who have incredible ideas but have been locked out of software development because they couldn't invest 5-10 years learning to code.

A 50-year-old doctor who wants to build a specialized medical tool, a teacher who sees exactly what educational software should look like, a small business owner who knows their industry's pain points better than any developer. These people have been sitting on the sidelines because the barrier to entry was so high.

The "vibe coding" revolution isn't really about kids (though that's cute) - it's about unleashing all the pent-up innovation from people who understand problems deeply but couldn't translate that understanding into software.

It's like the web democratized publishing, or smartphones democratized photography. Suddenly expertise in the domain matters more than expertise in the tools.

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#417

Post by m3kw9 »

tudorizer wrote: post #405

95% terrible expression of the landscape, 5% neatly dumbed down analogies. English is a terrible language for deterministic outcomes in complex/complicated systems. Vibe coders won't understand this until they are 2 years into building the thing. LLMs have their merits and he sometimes aludes to them, although it almost feels accidental. Also, you don't spend years studying computer science to learn the language/synt…

Like biz logic requirements they need to be fine grained defined

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#418

Post by nevertoolate »

kordlessagain wrote: post #415
darqis wrote: post #193

when I started coding at the age of 11 in machine code and assembly on the C64, the dream was to create software that creates software. Nowadays it's almost reality, almost because the devil is always in the details. When you're used to write code, writing code is relatively fast. You need this knowledge to debug issues with generated code. However you're now telling AI to fix the bugs in the generated code. I see it…

Kids? Think about all the domain experts, entrepreneurs, researchers, designers, and creative people who have incredible ideas but have been locked out of software development because they couldn't invest 5-10 years learning to code. A 50-year-old doctor who wants to build a specialized medical tool, a teacher who sees exactly what educational software should look like, a small business owner who knows their industry…

It sounds too good to be true. Why do you think llm is better in coding then in how education software should be designed?

Re: Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

#420

Post by skydhash »

kordlessagain wrote: post #414
practal wrote: post #50

Great talk, thanks for putting it online so quickly. I liked the idea of making the generation / verification loop go brrr, and one way to do this is to make verification not just a human task, but a machine task, where possible. Yes, I am talking about formal verification, of course! That also goes nicely together with "keeping the AI on a tight leash". It seems to clash though with "English is the new programming l…

This thread perfectly captures what Karpathy was getting at. We're witnessing a fundamental shift where the interface to computing is changing from formal syntax to natural language. But you can see people struggling to let go of the formal foundations they've built their careers on.

Not really. There’s a problem to be solved, and the solution is always best exprimed in formal notation, because we can then let computers do it and not worry about it.

We already have natural languages for human systems and the only way it works is because of shared metaphors and punishment and rewards. Everyone is incentivized to do a good job.

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