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We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

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Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#51

Post by throwaway27448 »

jwpapi wrote: post #24

Has someone verified this was an actual bug? One of AI’s strengths is definitely exploration, f.e. in finding bugs, but it still has a high false positive rate. Depending on context that matters or it wont. Also one has to be aware that there are a lot of bugs that AI won’t find but humans would I don’t have the expertise to verify this bug actually happened, but I’m curious.

It's not even clear if AI was used to find the bug: they mention modeling the software with an "ai native" language, whatever that means. What is not clear is how they found themselves modeling the gyros software of the apollo code to begin with.

But, I do think their explanation of the lock acquisition and the failure scenario is quite clear and compelling.

Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#52

Post by whiplash451 »

riverforest wrote: post #42

Software that ran on 4KB of memory and got humans to the moon still has undiscovered bugs in it. That says something about the complexity hiding in even the smallest codebases.

My guess is that in such low memory regimes, program length is very loosely correlated with bug rate.

If anything, if you try to cram a ton of complexity into a few kb of memory, the likelihood of introducing bugs becomes very high.

Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#54

Post by butlike »

monooso wrote: post #11
croemer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one tell-tale of many: "No alarm, no program light." Another one: "Two instructions are missing: [...] Four bytes." One more: "The defensive coding hid the problem, but it didn’t eliminate it."

That's just writing. I frequently write like that. This insistence that certain stylistics patterns are "tell-tale" signs that an article was written by AI makes no sense, particularly when you consider that whatever stylistic ticks an LLM may possess are a result of it being trained on human writing.

[dead]

Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#55

Post by brookst »

monooso wrote: post #11
croemer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one tell-tale of many: "No alarm, no program light." Another one: "Two instructions are missing: [...] Four bytes." One more: "The defensive coding hid the problem, but it didn’t eliminate it."

That's just writing. I frequently write like that. This insistence that certain stylistics patterns are "tell-tale" signs that an article was written by AI makes no sense, particularly when you consider that whatever stylistic ticks an LLM may possess are a result of it being trained on human writing.

I’m so glad the witch hunt has moved on to phrasing so I get less grief for my em dashes.

Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#56

Post by Aurornis »

gcr wrote: post #10
josephg wrote: post #2

Super interesting. I wish this article wasn’t written by an LLM though. It feels soulless and plastic.

For what it’s worth, Pangram thinks this article is fully human-written: https://www.pangram.com/history/f5f68ce9-70ac-4c2b-b0c3-0ca8...

The AI writing detectors are very unreliable. This is important to mention because they can trigger in the opposite direction (reporting human written text as AI generated) which can result in false accusations.

It’s becoming a problem in schools as teachers start accusing students of cheating based on these detectors or ignore obvious signs of AI use because the detectors don’t trigger on it.

Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#57

Post by Gigachad »

rudhdb773b wrote: post #40
josephg wrote: post #2

Super interesting. I wish this article wasn’t written by an LLM though. It feels soulless and plastic.

Not to single out your comment, but it feels like it's gotten to the point where HN could use a rule against complaining about AI generated content. It seems like almost every discussion has at least someone complaining about "AI slop" in either the original post or the comments.

HN has gotten to the point where it’s not even worth clicking the link because of course it’s ai slop.

There is some real content in the haystack, but we almost need some kind of curator to find and display it rather than a vote system where most people vote on the title alone.

Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#58

Post by ChicagoBoy11 »

For anyone who liked this, I highly suggest you take a look at the CuriousMarc youtube channel, where he chronicles lots of efforts to preserve and understand several parts of the Apollo AGC, with a team of really technically competent and passionate collaborators.

One of the more interesting things they have been working on, is a potential re-interpretation of the infamous 1202 alarm. It is, as of current writing, popularly described as something related to nonsensical readings of a sensor which could (and were) safely ignored in the actual moon landing. However, if I remember correctly, some of their investigation revealed that actually there were many conditions which would cause that error to have been extremely critical and would've likely doomed the astronauts. It is super fascinating.

Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#59

Post by bookofjoe »

monooso wrote: post #27
croemer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are just some of the good examples I found. My hunch that this is substantially LLM-generated is based on more than that. In my head it's like a Bayesian classifier, you look at all the sentences and judge whether each is more or less likely to be LLM vs human generated. Then you add prior information like that the author did the research using Claude - which increases the likelihood that they also use Claude f…

Here's an alternative way of thinking about this... Someone probably expended a lot of time and effort planning, thinking about, and writing an interesting article, and then you stroll by and casually accuse them of being a bone idle cheat, with no supporting evidence other than your "sensitive detector" and a bunch of hand-wavy nonsense that adds up to naught.

Yet another way the mere possibility of AI/LLM being involved diminishes the value of ALL text.

If there is constant vigilance on the part of the reader as to how it was created, meaning and value become secondary, a sure path to the death of reading as a joy.

Re: We found an undocumented bug in the Apollo 11 guidance computer code

#60

Post by brookst »

croemer wrote: post #17
360MustangScope wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate that I can’t write em dashes freely anymore without people accusing the writing of being AI generated. Even though they are perfect for usage in writing down thoughts and notes.

I have nothing against em dashes. As long as your writing is human, experienced readers will be able to tell it's human. Only less experienced ones will use all or nothing rules. Em dashes just increase the likelihood that the text was LLM generated. They aren't proof.

That nuance is lost on the majority of anti-AI folks who’ve learned they get positive social reactions by declaring essentially everything to be AI written and condemnable.

“An em dash… they’re a witch!”… “it’s not just X, it’s Y… they’re a witch!”

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