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What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

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Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#51

Post by trollbridge »

Folcon wrote: post #11
trollbridge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are notoriously non-deterministic, and even at temperature zero you still can't predict exactly where the weights will take you next. An LLM can be made to be completely deterministic. I use them in this mode so I can reproduce test cases. Of course it requires complete control over the model, etc. but this myth that a computer program is non-deterministic needs to end. You can 100% predict where the weights “wi…

> You can 100% predict where the weights “will take you” given a set of inputs. Do you mean reproduce? Sorry it's just if you are saying what your statement implying then either the model is very simple, or you've figured out something incredible

Sure. Take the inputs and run it through the model.

You now have the output which will be perfectly reproduced with the same inputs.

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#52

Post by trollbridge »

simonw wrote: post #33
trollbridge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are notoriously non-deterministic, and even at temperature zero you still can't predict exactly where the weights will take you next. An LLM can be made to be completely deterministic. I use them in this mode so I can reproduce test cases. Of course it requires complete control over the model, etc. but this myth that a computer program is non-deterministic needs to end. You can 100% predict where the weights “wi…

Can you provide steps to reproduce so I can see one of these deterministic LLMs running myself? API based or local models.

I’d recommend starting with llamafile due to its simplicity and then move up to llamacpp and Unsloth.

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#53

Post by trollbridge »

simonw wrote: post #13
trollbridge wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are notoriously non-deterministic, and even at temperature zero you still can't predict exactly where the weights will take you next. An LLM can be made to be completely deterministic. I use them in this mode so I can reproduce test cases. Of course it requires complete control over the model, etc. but this myth that a computer program is non-deterministic needs to end. You can 100% predict where the weights “wi…

By "can't predict exactly where the weights will take you next" I meant with your brain. The blind chess analogy suggests you can predict, using your own thought process, the exact output of a prompt.

I could use my brain to run a set weights, given enough time (on the order of millions of years).

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#54

Post by gridspy »

andai wrote: post #26
simonw wrote: post #2

I'm not completely convinced by this comparison between blind chess and prompting LLMs. In blind chess you get deterministic information about the state of the board: each mental update to your board model can be precise, and you have the full state at every point in time. LLMs are notoriously non-deterministic, and even at temperature zero you still can't predict exactly where the weights will take you next. I suppo…

>you're going to end up with a system you don't 100% understand very quickly This has been my experience with all software projects. Even if I wrote all the code, my understanding of how everything works and fits together decays. ( See the Forgetting Curves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus )

While that may be true, you can be confident that it works in a way you personally understand. Because you understood it in the past.

Also, if you finish your work on a module with care - you return to a module you can trust with clear boundraries and known flaws. This is not true of AI output.

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#55

Post by youre-wrong3 »

gridspy wrote: post #54
andai wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you're going to end up with a system you don't 100% understand very quickly This has been my experience with all software projects. Even if I wrote all the code, my understanding of how everything works and fits together decays. ( See the Forgetting Curves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Ebbinghaus )

While that may be true, you can be confident that it works in a way you personally understand. Because you understood it in the past. Also, if you finish your work on a module with care - you return to a module you can trust with clear boundraries and known flaws. This is not true of AI output.

No. You can absolutely build things with AI small or large and understand it. If you don’t understand it. Then you’re not caring about the output to begin with and not guiding it to build the solution you want.

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#56

Post by lelanthran »

simonw wrote: post #43
lelanthran wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You learn a lot more by reading code than writing it. "You learn a lot more by reading trigonometry than by doing problems" See how ridiculous that sounds?

Have you heard of the worked-example effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worked-example_effect ? It's quite a surprising result: it turns out that there are cases where seeing someone else work through a worked example is more effective than struggling through the problem yourself. (Obviously it doesn't apply universally, but your "see how ridiculous that sounds?" suggests to me you may not have heard of this before…

As that link says, this approach is used in Maths textbooks, and yet, as the parent of two kids, I have never come across a single student who is able to pass trig without working the problems.

If reality differs from the results of academic studies, it's not the reality that is wrong.

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#57

Post by shakna »

feelamee wrote: post #35
shakna wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Floating point matrix calculations are non-deterministic. You need to invent new hardware, that doesn't use floating point math, first. [0] [0] https://arxiv.org/html/2506.09501

using which floating point standard? IEEE754 is totally deterministic

The software standard is. GPU matrix calculations, are not. The hardware, has tiny shifts that rarely matter, except in high finance and... AI modeling.

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#58

Post by shakna »

mrob wrote: post #30
shakna wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Floating point matrix calculations are non-deterministic. You need to invent new hardware, that doesn't use floating point math, first. [0] [0] https://arxiv.org/html/2506.09501

>Floating point matrix calculations are non-deterministic. This is not inherent to floating-point math. That actual (true) claim in the article is that different hardware and different hardware configurations produce different results. But deterministic inference is possible, e.g. llama.cpp on CPU is deterministic by default.

Right... That's why I added "matrix" in there. Because we don't have matrix operations in software, but in hardware.

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#59

Post by dgellow »

bwfan123 wrote: post #46
dgellow wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel one need to also have developed the intuition by writing lots of code for reading to be really effective. An an analogy I’m reading a lot of German those days as I’m aiming to become fluent, and it’s very effective to improve only because I spend so much time developing a the intuition by going through the whole grammar, forcing myself to write, forcing myself to speak, etc. Doing only the reading improves you…

> I feel one need to also have developed the intuition by writing lots of code for reading to be really effective. This is one of the problems young engineers are going to face who rely excessively on AI to generate code. Their intuitions on what constitutes good code will not sharpen, since they are not exercising the tool that sharpens it which is writing code. Intuitions start fuzzy, and incorrect, and gradually s…

Thanks, you captured the idea better than I could!

Re: What my dad taught me about AI coding in the 90s

#60

Post by [deleted] »

simonw wrote: post #2

I'm not completely convinced by this comparison between blind chess and prompting LLMs. In blind chess you get deterministic information about the state of the board: each mental update to your board model can be precise, and you have the full state at every point in time. LLMs are notoriously non-deterministic, and even at temperature zero you still can't predict exactly where the weights will take you next. I suppo…

[deleted]
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