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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]

#501

Post by tudorizer »

karaterobot wrote: post #482
fifilura wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way, I am not sure it is a requirement on HN to read/view the source. Particularly not a 40min video. Maybe it is tongue-in-cheek, maybe I am serious. I am not sure myself. But sometimes the interesting discussions comes from what is on top of the posters mind when viewing the title. Is that bad?

It's odd! The guidelines don't say anything about having to read or watch what the posts linked to, all they say is it's inappropriate to accuse someone you're responding to of not having done so. There is a community expectation that people will know what they're talking about before posting, and in most cases that means having read the article. At the same time, I suspect that in many cases a lot of people commenti…

I accept any equivalents of reading comprehension tests to prove thay I watched the video, as I have many of Andrej's in the past. He's generally a good communicator, defo easy to follow.

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

#502

Post by diggan »

necrodome wrote: post #451
diggan wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Border-line off-topic, but since you're flagrantly self-promoting, might as well add some more rule breakage to it. You know websites/apps who let you enter text/details and then not displaying sign in/up screen until you submit it, so you feel like "Oh but I already filled it out, might as well sign up"? They really suck, big time! It's disingenuous, misleading and wastes people's time. I had no interest in using yo…

Thanks for the benefit of the doubt. I typed that in a hurry, and it didn’t come out the way I intended. We had the idea that there’s a class of apps [1] that could really benefit from our tooling - mainly Fireproof, our local-first database, along with embedded LLM calling and image generation support. The app itself is open source, and the hosted version is free. Initially, there was no login or signup - you could…

My complaint isn't about that you need to protect it with a login/signup, but where in the process you put that login/signup.

Put it before letting people enter text, rather than once they've entered text and pressed the button, and people won't feel mislead anymore.

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

#503

Post by BobbyJo »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #430
BobbyJo wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The versioning makes sense to me. Software has a cycle where a new tool is created to solve a problem, and the problem winds up being meaty enough, and the tool effective enough, that the exploration of the problem space the tool unlocks is essentially a new category/skill/whatever. computers -> assembly -> HLL -> web -> cloud -> AI Nothing on that list has disappeared, but the work has changed enough to warrant a fe…

For me it's even simpler: V1.0: describing solutions to specific problems directly, precisely, for machines to execute. V2.0: giving machine examples of good and bad answers to specific problems we don't know how to describe precisely, for machine to generalize from and solve such indirectly specified problem. V3.0: telling machine what to do in plain language, for it to figure out and solve. V2 was coded in V1 style…

That's less a versioning of software and more a versioning of AI's role in software. None -> Partial -> Total. Its a valid scale with regard to AI's role specifically, but I think Karpathy was intending to make a point about software as a whole, and even the details of how that middle "Partial" era evolves.

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

#504

Post by barumrho »

tudorizer wrote: post #496
brainless wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure I got your point about English. I thought Karpathy was talking about English being the language of prompts, not output. Outputs can be English but if the goal is to compute using the output, then we need structured output (JSON, snippets of code, etc.), not English.

Entertain me in an exercise: First, instruct a friend/colleague of how to multiply two 2 digit numbers in plain English. Secondly (ideally with a different friend, to not contaminate tests), explain the same but using only maths formulas. Where does the prompting process start and where does it end? Is it a one-off? Is the prompt clear enough? Do all the parties involved communicate within same domain objects? Hopefu…

I agree with your point about English, but LLMs are not limited to English. You can show them formulas, images, code, etc.

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

#506

Post by qjack »

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…

While I agree with you broadly, remember that those that employ you don't have those skills either. They accept that they are ceding control of the details and trust us to make those decisions or ask clarifying questions (LLMs are getting better at those things too). Vibe coders are clients seeking an alternative, not developers.

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

#507

Post by TeMPOraL »

sensanaty wrote: post #316
bsenftner wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a greybeard, 45+ years coding, including active in AI during the mid 80's and used it when it applied throughout my entire career. That career being media and animation production backends, where the work is both at the technical and creative edge. I currently have an AI integrated office suite, which has attorneys, professional writers, and political activists using the system. It is office software, word proces…

So AI is simultaneously going to take over everyone's job and do literally everything, including being used as application UI somehow... But you have to talk to it like a moody teenager at their first job lest you get nothing but garbage? I have to put just as much (and usually, more) effort talking to this non-deterministic black box as I would to an intern who joined a week ago to get anything usable out of it? Yea…

> But you have to talk to it like a moody teenager at their first job lest you get nothing but garbage?

No, you have to talk to it like to an adult human being.

If one's doing so and still gets garbage results from SOTA LLMs, that to me is a strong indication one also cannot communicate with other human beings effectively. It's literally the same skill. Such individual is probably the kind of clueless person we all learn to isolate and navigate around, because contrary to their beliefs, they're not the center of the world, and we cannot actually read their mind.

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

#508

Post by serjester »

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…

I think you’re straw manning his argument.

He explicitly says that both LLMs and traditional software have very important roles to play.

LLMs though are incredibly useful when encoding the behavior of the system deterministically is impossible. Previously this fell under the umbrella of problems solved with ML. This would take a giant time investment and a highly competent team to pull off.

Now anyone can solve many of these same problems with a single API call. It’s easy to wave this off, but this a total paradigm shift.

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

#509

Post by jeffnappi »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #408
ukprogrammer wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even an LLM could tell you that that's an unknowable thing, perhaps you should rely on them more.

Has a critical service that you used meaningfully changed to seemingly integrate non-deterministic "intelligence" in the past 3 years in one of its critical paths? I'd bet good money that the answer to literally everyone is no. My company uses GenAI a lot in a lot of projects. Would it have some impact if all models suddenly stopped working? Sure. But the oncalls wouldn't even get paged.

Tesla FSD, Waymo are good examples.

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

#510

Post by tudorizer »

qjack wrote: post #506
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…

While I agree with you broadly, remember that those that employ you don't have those skills either. They accept that they are ceding control of the details and trust us to make those decisions or ask clarifying questions (LLMs are getting better at those things too). Vibe coders are clients seeking an alternative, not developers.

> Vibe coders are clients seeking an alternative, not developers.

Agreed. That's genuinely a good framing for clients.

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