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> How functional does the code have to be before it's no longer a hallucination? From LLMs, at least, I expect it will always be a hallucination. Code is never
by wpietri 4y ago
> How functional does the code have to be before it's no longer a hallucination?
From LLMs, at least, I expect it will always be a hallucination. Code is never the point. Code is the working medium by which people solve problems for other people.
One way to see this is to realize that code bases on their own are generally worthless in the sense that people rarely pay much money for them. They pay for users. They pay for teams. But they don't generally pay for raw code.
Another way to look at it: imagine that a manager looks at ChatGPT and says, "At last, I can fire all the programmers. Fuck those guys." They set out to build an app. How long do you think it will take before they are forced to admit defeat and hire somebody who can read and edit the code?
Even if you think they make it all the way to a revenue-generating product, the manager will have become a prompt engineer, creating a large mass of interrelated prompts that are used to make code that makes the app. We have not eliminated the programmer; we have turned a manager into a programmer who has been forced to discover a new programming language. One that is clearly more English-like, but it also lacking in precision and, on current evidence, is much harder to use.
But I think the more likely outcome is that they will need actual programmers pretty quickly. That at best they will have speeded the creation of some more or less generic code. Which is exactly what we saw with the code-generation wizards of earlier eras: you got a fast initial result as long as it was pretty standard. But then you were generally worse off, because you had a bunch of only semi-coherent code that somebody had to understand before they could do novel or difficult things.
- WalterSear 4y ago> Another way to look at it: imagine that a manager looks at ChatGPT and says, "At last, I can fire all the programmers. Fuck those guys." They set out to build an app. How long do you think it will take before they are forced to admit defeat and hire somebody who can read and edit the code? How is this different from "At last, I can fire all [those senior programmers and hire junior ones, and keep a team lead around, to keep them on track]. Fuck those guys."?
- wpietri 4y agoMaybe I'm not getting the point of your question. It's different in that junior programmers are still people, capable of much more than LLMs are. But yes, it's the same shortsighted executive intent.
- WalterSear 4y agoMy point is that the direction and management that you outline is as relevant to GPT as it is to a team of (sufficiently) junior developers. And, given that people find utility in Github copilot, I'm not convinced that the difference between GPT and a junior developer is qualitative rather than quantitative. Regardless of whether LLMs are demonstrating intelligence or creativity, they are already writing productive code: they aren't a hallucination.
- wpietri 4y agoIf you'd like to claim that an LLM plus a manager can produce an app just as well as a junior developer, I look forward to your demonstration of that. but even if it's true, I think it's a case I've covered in the paragraph after the one you quote.
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago> One way to see this is to realize that code bases on their own are generally worthless in the sense that people rarely pay much money for them. They pay for users. They pay for teams. But they don't generally pay for raw code This is something I've thought for a while. If Google's source code was leaked tomorrow, would it even matter? Almost certainly not, and most people probably couldn't do much with it either.
- oceanplexian 4y agoI’ve worked at another FAANG, and I used to joke all the time that if our code leaked it would give us a competitive advantage because the folks copying would have to spend so much time implementing our bloated code and god-awful build tools that they would probably go bankrupt.
- wpietri 4y agoOh my god. Kubernetes is a plot!