7 ms·

I'm sure this line of logic is very comforting, but frankly, this comfort disappears quickly when you actually use ChatGPT. What you find is that you can intera

by jchw 4y ago

I'm sure this line of logic is very comforting, but frankly, this comfort disappears quickly when you actually use ChatGPT. What you find is that you can interact with it in a quite natural way, and it is able to synthesize and iterate at a level that feels easily on par with a moderately skilled human software engineer. I know it's uncomfortable, but it doesn't even matter if the machine is "non-intelligent." Nobody gives a damn. What matters is what you can do with it, and every iteration of GPT the goal posts keep moving further, but this time it's really difficult to deny: you really, really can describe a program at a high level and ChatGPT can implement it. You can point out an error and it can fix it. Hell, you can feed it compiler errors. Is it literally as good as a human software engineer? No, but it's also better too. I doubt ChatGPT could debug as effectively as a veteran software engineer (... In fairness, most humans can't either.) It can debug pretty decently, but there's still work there. That said, the breadth of knowledge encoded in a language model is stunning. I'm pretty sure you can't just regurgitate an implementation of the discrete cosine transform in Rust without at least pulling up Wikipedia, but ChatGPT can, because well. It doesn't have to pull it up. I still don't think ChatGPT is ready to replace human programmers. It may be a long time before we have general enough intelligence to replace knowledge work meaningfully with AI. However, if you think it's not happening ever, because machines are not "intelligent" based on some set of goal posts, I've got bad news: that's not part of the job listing. It's easy to laugh at MSN publishing articles written by GPT; that's just stupid. However, at some level you have to admit that the input to ChatGPT is almost as high level as directives from project managers, and the output is almost low level enough to simply input directly into source control. That leaves very little to the imagination for how this could quickly spiral out of control.

ricardobayes 4y ago
Still, it's a tool that requires human input. Similarly how Photoshop didn't make artists obsolete, it elevated the trade to a new level and capabilities.
- passion__desire 4y ago
  "And what would excite me about actually the birth of superintelligent AI - one of the things, apart from solving obvious problems like curing disease and energy issues and all the rest, perhaps differs a little bit with what Stuart said. I’m not so worried about idiocracy or all of us just losing our way as apes and living unproductive lives in dialogue with these oracles. I think actually, I would want a truly value-aligned superintelligence to incrementally show us, not merely conserve what we want, but show us what we should want to keep improving our values so that we can navigate in the space of all possible experiences and converge on better and better ones." - Sam Harris Source : https://youtu.be/h0962biiZa4?t=2486 https://youtu.be/h0962biiZa4?t=2486
- rightbyte 4y ago
  It is probably an excellent learning tool. You can show it code and it will point of the bugs. void sort_string(char *str, int backwards) { // Get the length of the string int len = strlen(str); // Use a bubble sort algorithm to sort the string for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < len - i; j++) { // If the current character is greater than the next character (or less than, if sorting backwards), swap them if ((backwards && str[j] < str[i + 1]) || (!backwards && str[j] > str[i + 1])) { char temp = str[j]; str[j] = str[j + 1]; str[j + 1] = temp; } } } } Will yield: "The sort_string() function contains two bugs. The first bug is in the inner loop conditional statement [...] The second bug is in the termination condition of the inner loop." and a detailed explanation of the fix and what the problems are. The problem is that the working market might be flooded by this since way more people will be able to code ... Github Co-pilot is nowhere near this.
  - ricardobayes 4y ago
    Yes, it seems useful for advanced learners who might actually have questions. It probably can't teach you from scratch yet.
    - drivers99 4y ago
      I asked it to write a Forth function to do something and when it used commands (words) I didn’t know I asked it what those did. Seems useful for learning. The problem I see is you never know for sure when it’s bluffing about a fact.
  - ascorbic 4y ago
    > Github Co-pilot is nowhere near this. They're both based on GPT-3. The difference is that Copilot's model is trained on a lot more code. I'd be amazed if Copilot doesn't have a super-linter soon that can find and fix these kind of bugs.
- timeon 4y ago
  Photoshop didn't make artists obsolete but i.e. rendering software did many people obsolete.
rightbyte 4y ago
Ye I signed up and tried some queries. It was quite scary. "Write a function that sorts the elements of a c string backwards, in C." "Add a flag to the sort function which makes it sort the string forward." "Could you write a endian swap function for double argument in PIC assembler?" "Could you write a binary sort in PIC 8-bit assembler" "Write a Javascript function that prints the day of the week together with some Chinese words of wisdom." It had no problem doing any one those. I ran them all, except the assembler ones. The question is how good it is to process larger chunks of code and makes changes to it. People thinking about becoming programmers might need to rethink their plans if this one improves ... EDIT: Oh dear. I introduced bugs in its sort code and it found them and explained what they did.
- guiambros 4y ago
  Last night I entered the page-long instructions for Advent of Code day 4, and it spewed out perfectly readable code and solved it on the first try [1]. And we're not talking about a common algorithm that has been solved many times before, but a convoluted story that is full of "elves cleaning up overlapping sections of the camp" (!), and ChatGPT was still able to understand it, write the code to solve it, and even explain how it works. It's nothing short of a phenomenal milestone. [1] https://twitter.com/GuiAmbros/status/1599282083838296064 https://twitter.com/GuiAmbros/status/1599282083838296064
  - ak_111 4y ago
    Are you sure this whole problem with its solution wasn't indexed in ChatGPT training set, so all it did here is retrieve the whole answer to the problem similar to how google will find the solution pretty quickly if you search for "advent of code day 4 solution"? Can you see if it solves an advent of code problem whose solution hasn't been posted yet? If it did I will consider this an almost publishable breakthrough.
    - ghusbands 4y ago
      It wasn't in the training set - the puzzle was released today, as part of this year's advent of code. ChatGPT is eminently publishable and has demonstrably produced plenty of novel, if boring, code.
rajin444 4y ago
> However, if you think it's not happening ever, because machines are not "intelligent" based on some set of goal posts, I've got bad news: that's not part of the job listing. When an AI is able to train itself (like a human) is when developer jobs will be in trouble. Fortunately, every other profession will also be out of a job as well. Until then, rote work will continue to be automated more effectively but no more.
- vbezhenar 4y ago
  The most ironic thing is that people who do the hard work are unlikely to be obsoleted any time soon. At least in third-world countries. Theoretically you can build robot today to replace janitors, plumbers or serviceme but it just too expensive and does not scale. But replacing computer operators is scalable. So I definitely expect most office people including low skilled developers to be replaced by AI in a 20 years. High-skilled developers might survive (and I'm not sure if I'd qualify) but obviously for most workers that's not very encouraging.
yuuu 4y ago
> However, at some level you have to admit that the input to ChatGPT is almost as high level as directives from project managers, and the output is almost low level enough to simply input directly into source control. This is the part that is going to change the way people work in fundamental ways very quickly. It will turn good software developers into non-shitty project managers, project managers into ?, and mediocre developers into ?.
- timeon 4y ago
  Project managers into mediocre developers and mediocre developers into jobless.
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19h 4y ago
Honestly the thing that shocked me the most is this kind of query I've been doing for the last 10 hours: Rewrite the following in Rust: size_t strlenNEON(const char *p) { const char *const top = p; uint8x16_t c16 = vdupq_n_u8(0); /* 16 byte alignment */ size_t n = reinterpret_cast<size_t>(p) & 15; if (n > 0) { uint8x16_t x = *(const uint8x16_t*)&p[-n]; uint8x16_t a = vceqq_u8(x, c16); unsigned long mask = GetByteMask(a) << (16 + n); if (mask) { return __builtin_clz(mask); } p += 16 - n; } assert((reinterpret_cast<size_t>(p) & 15) == 0); for (;;) { uint8x16_t x = *(const uint8x16_t*)&p[0]; uint8x16_t a = vceqq_u8(x, c16); if (isFound(a)) { unsigned int mask = GetByteMask(a); return p + __builtin_clz(mask) - top; } p += 16; } } It even correctly produces the implementation of the unimplemented functions being called from the C++ impl.
- thdespou 4y ago
  It's the journey not the destination that matters.
dorkwood 4y ago
It works well with popular languages. Any somewhat obscure language results in ChatGPT hallucinating nonsense code and telling you it's correct when it's not.
- int_19h 4y ago
  It can do pretty well with obscure languages if you explain how they work before you ask for a solution. You can even invent a whole new language just for the question.

by jchw 4y ago

ricardobayes 4y ago

Still, it's a tool that requires human input. Similarly how Photoshop didn't make artists obsolete, it elevated the trade to a new level and capabilities.

passion__desire 4y ago
"And what would excite me about actually the birth of superintelligent AI - one of the things, apart from solving obvious problems like curing disease and energy issues and all the rest, perhaps differs a little bit with what Stuart said. I’m not so worried about idiocracy or all of us just losing our way as apes and living unproductive lives in dialogue with these oracles. I think actually, I would want a truly value-aligned superintelligence to incrementally show us, not merely conserve what we want, but show us what we should want to keep improving our values so that we can navigate in the space of all possible experiences and converge on better and better ones." - Sam Harris Source : https://youtu.be/h0962biiZa4?t=2486 https://youtu.be/h0962biiZa4?t=2486
rightbyte 4y ago
It is probably an excellent learning tool. You can show it code and it will point of the bugs. void sort_string(char *str, int backwards) { // Get the length of the string int len = strlen(str); // Use a bubble sort algorithm to sort the string for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) { for (int j = 0; j < len - i; j++) { // If the current character is greater than the next character (or less than, if sorting backwards), swap them if ((backwards && str[j] < str[i + 1]) || (!backwards && str[j] > str[i + 1])) { char temp = str[j]; str[j] = str[j + 1]; str[j + 1] = temp; } } } } Will yield: "The sort_string() function contains two bugs. The first bug is in the inner loop conditional statement [...] The second bug is in the termination condition of the inner loop." and a detailed explanation of the fix and what the problems are. The problem is that the working market might be flooded by this since way more people will be able to code ... Github Co-pilot is nowhere near this.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  Yes, it seems useful for advanced learners who might actually have questions. It probably can't teach you from scratch yet.
  - drivers99 4y ago
    I asked it to write a Forth function to do something and when it used commands (words) I didn’t know I asked it what those did. Seems useful for learning. The problem I see is you never know for sure when it’s bluffing about a fact.
- ascorbic 4y ago
  > Github Co-pilot is nowhere near this. They're both based on GPT-3. The difference is that Copilot's model is trained on a lot more code. I'd be amazed if Copilot doesn't have a super-linter soon that can find and fix these kind of bugs.
timeon 4y ago
Photoshop didn't make artists obsolete but i.e. rendering software did many people obsolete.

rightbyte 4y ago

Ye I signed up and tried some queries. It was quite scary. "Write a function that sorts the elements of a c string backwards, in C." "Add a flag to the sort function which makes it sort the string forward." "Could you write a endian swap function for double argument in PIC assembler?" "Could you write a binary sort in PIC 8-bit assembler" "Write a Javascript function that prints the day of the week together with some Chinese words of wisdom." It had no problem doing any one those. I ran them all, except the assembler ones. The question is how good it is to process larger chunks of code and makes changes to it. People thinking about becoming programmers might need to rethink their plans if this one improves ... EDIT: Oh dear. I introduced bugs in its sort code and it found them and explained what they did.

guiambros 4y ago
Last night I entered the page-long instructions for Advent of Code day 4, and it spewed out perfectly readable code and solved it on the first try [1]. And we're not talking about a common algorithm that has been solved many times before, but a convoluted story that is full of "elves cleaning up overlapping sections of the camp" (!), and ChatGPT was still able to understand it, write the code to solve it, and even explain how it works. It's nothing short of a phenomenal milestone. [1] https://twitter.com/GuiAmbros/status/1599282083838296064 https://twitter.com/GuiAmbros/status/1599282083838296064
- ak_111 4y ago
  Are you sure this whole problem with its solution wasn't indexed in ChatGPT training set, so all it did here is retrieve the whole answer to the problem similar to how google will find the solution pretty quickly if you search for "advent of code day 4 solution"? Can you see if it solves an advent of code problem whose solution hasn't been posted yet? If it did I will consider this an almost publishable breakthrough.
  - ghusbands 4y ago
    It wasn't in the training set - the puzzle was released today, as part of this year's advent of code. ChatGPT is eminently publishable and has demonstrably produced plenty of novel, if boring, code.

rajin444 4y ago

> However, if you think it's not happening ever, because machines are not "intelligent" based on some set of goal posts, I've got bad news: that's not part of the job listing. When an AI is able to train itself (like a human) is when developer jobs will be in trouble. Fortunately, every other profession will also be out of a job as well. Until then, rote work will continue to be automated more effectively but no more.

vbezhenar 4y ago
The most ironic thing is that people who do the hard work are unlikely to be obsoleted any time soon. At least in third-world countries. Theoretically you can build robot today to replace janitors, plumbers or serviceme but it just too expensive and does not scale. But replacing computer operators is scalable. So I definitely expect most office people including low skilled developers to be replaced by AI in a 20 years. High-skilled developers might survive (and I'm not sure if I'd qualify) but obviously for most workers that's not very encouraging.

yuuu 4y ago

> However, at some level you have to admit that the input to ChatGPT is almost as high level as directives from project managers, and the output is almost low level enough to simply input directly into source control. This is the part that is going to change the way people work in fundamental ways very quickly. It will turn good software developers into non-shitty project managers, project managers into ?, and mediocre developers into ?.

timeon 4y ago
Project managers into mediocre developers and mediocre developers into jobless.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

19h 4y ago

Honestly the thing that shocked me the most is this kind of query I've been doing for the last 10 hours: Rewrite the following in Rust: size_t strlenNEON(const char *p) { const char *const top = p; uint8x16_t c16 = vdupq_n_u8(0); /* 16 byte alignment */ size_t n = reinterpret_cast<size_t>(p) & 15; if (n > 0) { uint8x16_t x = *(const uint8x16_t*)&p[-n]; uint8x16_t a = vceqq_u8(x, c16); unsigned long mask = GetByteMask(a) << (16 + n); if (mask) { return __builtin_clz(mask); } p += 16 - n; } assert((reinterpret_cast<size_t>(p) & 15) == 0); for (;;) { uint8x16_t x = *(const uint8x16_t*)&p[0]; uint8x16_t a = vceqq_u8(x, c16); if (isFound(a)) { unsigned int mask = GetByteMask(a); return p + __builtin_clz(mask) - top; } p += 16; } } It even correctly produces the implementation of the unimplemented functions being called from the C++ impl.

thdespou 4y ago
It's the journey not the destination that matters.

dorkwood 4y ago

It works well with popular languages. Any somewhat obscure language results in ChatGPT hallucinating nonsense code and telling you it's correct when it's not.

int_19h 4y ago
It can do pretty well with obscure languages if you explain how they work before you ask for a solution. You can even invent a whole new language just for the question.