I'm curious how well a o1-like model thinks, given minutes instead of seconds and the temperature set relatively high.
Terence Tao on O1
461–470 of 527 posts
Re: Terence Tao on O1
#462Does anyone here think this will change without a full cognitive apparatus? Aka “agents”, to use the modern term? I have my doubts, but I’m relatively uninformed about the cutting edge of pure ML itself.
Just off the top of my head, maybe a RLHF run performed by academic experts and geared towards “creative applications” could get us farther than we are? Given how much the original RLHF run cost with underpaid workers in developing countries that might be exorbitantly expensive, but it’s worth a dream. Perhaps as a governmental or NGO-driven open source initiative…
Of course, a core problem here is defining “creativity” in stringent — or in Chomsky’s words, “scientific” — terms. RLHF dodged that a bit by leaning on the intuitive capabilities of your human critics. I’m constantly opining about how LLMs solved the frame problem, but perhaps it’s better characterized as a partial solution for a relatively easy/basic environment: stories about the real world. The Abstract/Academic/Scientific Frame Problem might be another breakthrough away, yet…
Re: Terence Tao on O1
#463Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think most code being written is like a custom car made out of the most cost effective parts available. Not pretty, but it gets the job done for the specific use cases of a given business. Real production code doesn’t and have a shutter stock equivalent. If you think most code is stock, then you just haven’t had enough experience in industry yet.
I actually like that analogy. It's somewhere in between. Enough that LLMs can help in many ways, but the current models are still far away from doing everything.
Yeah, they’re not useless, but I don’t really see them replacing the profession of programming.
Just another tool in the kit.
Re: Terence Tao on O1
#464Earlier quoted context omitted.
This has been observed by more people than just Terence Tao. Try using chatgpt to program something of higher complexity than tutorial code or write a basic blog post, it lacks creativity and the code is poorly designed.
Even for like basic Rust programs it ties itself into countless borrow checker issues and cannot get out of it, both the OpenAI as well as Sonnet (Anthropic). It doesn't really get logic still, but it does small edits well when the code is very clear. I think this will always remain a problem. Because it can never shut up, it keeps making stuff up and "hallucinate" (works normally, just incorrectly) to dig itself fur…
To me it's quite good for Rust as it usually suggests me some (unknown to me) borrow checker API that actually helps me either solve the issue at hand or at least point me in the right direction to figure what is actually wrong with my code and it doesn't compile
Re: Terence Tao on O1
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
> people who complain on HN that (paid/good - only Sonnet 3.5 and GPT4o are in this category) Correction: I complain that the only decent model in "Open"AI's arsenal, that is GPT-4, has been replaced by a cheaper GPT-4o, which gives subpar answers to most of my question (I don't care it does it faster). As they moved it to "old, legacy" models, I expect they will phase it out, at which point I'll cancel my OpenAI sub…
Nah, o1 is fucking impressive. It's really fucking good. I'm guessing you haven't used it yet.
I used it and was really disappointed, maybe because of the hype. It generates a long page of entries that I used to generate in the past, often with better results. Note I use it for code generation, not for problem solving.
So I cancelled two of my 3 subscriptions as I realized OpenAI goes in a direction that is not useful for me at all. Claude, on the other hand, is incredibly useful.
Re: Terence Tao on O1
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's interesting. I am young so I don't know what actually is creativity. Could you explain that part for me?
A couple days ago I saw a tweet that described how to remove an element from an array in O(1) time instead of O(n). The key to it was identifying that for the purpose the given array was being used for, it could be unordered / not fully ordered, and it would not be an issue. This way, it was possible to simply replace the element with the last array element, then decrease the size of the array by one. I'd say that's…
> whoever came up with this was able identify what can be traded off to make the previously impossible, possible, unlocking new scales and possibilities.
In fairness, that is an extremely standard trick so it's reasonably unlikely that the author came up with it themselves.
Re: Terence Tao on O1
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like to think I'm more of a "challenging and novel problems" developer than a "copy and paste from Stack Overflow" developer, and I've been finding LLMs extremely useful for over two years at this point. Notes: https://simonwillison.net/tags/ai-assisted-programming/
Yeah, I was gonna say this is not how I see this going. The copy/paste dev is replaced by the novel dev using LLM for the stuff they used to hire interns and juniors for. In law, this sort of thing already happened with the rise of better research tools. The work L1s used to do a generation ago just does not exist now. An attorney with experience gets the results faster on their own now. With all the pipeline and QoL…
That makes some sense, but seems to be answering a different question of whose jobs may be in jeopardy from LLMs, as opposed to who might currently find them useful.
Note though that not all companies see it this way - the telecom I work at is hoping to replace senior onshore developers with junior offshore ones leveraging "GenAI"! I agree that the opposite makes more sense - the seniors are needed, and it's the juniors whose work may be more within reach of LLMs.
I really can't see junior developer positions wholesale disappearing though - more likely them just leveraging LLM/AI-enhanced dev tools to be more productive. Maybe in some companies where there are lots of junior developers they may (due to increased productivity) need fewer in the future, but the productivity gains to be had at this point seem questionable ... as another poster commented, the output of an LLM is only as useful as the skill of the person reviewing it for correctness.
Re: Terence Tao on O1
#468‘Able to make the same creative mathematical leaps as Terence Tao’ seems like a pretty high bar to be setting for AI. This is like when you’re being interviewed for a programming job and the interviewer explains some problem to you that it took their team months to figure out, and then they’re disappointed you can’t whiteboard out the solution they came up with in 40 minutes without access to google.
My experience of working with people like Terence Tao, and being nowhere near their standard, is that they are looking for any kind of creativity. Everything is accepted, and it doesn't have to be "at their level". Having read what he's saying there, and with my experience, I think your characterisation is inaccurate. And having been at the talk he gave for the IMO earlier this year he is impressed with some of the i…
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Re: Terence Tao on O1
#469Earlier quoted context omitted.
My experience of working with people like Terence Tao, and being nowhere near their standard, is that they are looking for any kind of creativity. Everything is accepted, and it doesn't have to be "at their level". Having read what he's saying there, and with my experience, I think your characterisation is inaccurate. And having been at the talk he gave for the IMO earlier this year he is impressed with some of the i…
That's interesting. I am young so I don't know what actually is creativity. Could you explain that part for me?
> Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others
Basically can you provide a new perspective on solving a problem that hasn't been considered or a new way of looking at an existing idea in a new way to unlock a path.
Re: Terence Tao on O1
#470Glad to see Tao using Mastodon instead of Twitter.