7 ms·

It seems like we're pretty close to the point where LLMs will be able to create simple client apps. When anyone can make, say, an android note-taking app to th

It seems like we're pretty close to the point where LLMs will be able to create simple client apps. When anyone can make, say, an android note-taking app to their own specifications for free, it's not hard to imagine the impact on the paid note-taking apps in the store today. "Make me a game like Clash of Clans, but free, and with..." is probably only a few years further out. One interesting question is: when people are using LLMs to generate software for their own use, what will they do for the server component of client-server use cases? Is "LLM, go register me an EC2 instance and configure it not to go over $20/mo, here's my credit card number" totally out of the question?

throwaway9870 4y ago
How long until I can make my own movie like Star Wars, but with my story line and my characters? Serious question, does anyone have has insights into this problem?
- Sai_ 4y ago
  I want to do this for my kid - inject him as a character in kids stories and songs.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Probably not very long, look into ControlNET for video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FZuJdJGFfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FZuJdJGFfE It's far from movie quality right now but there are a lot of people working on this sort of thing. People are also exploring text to 3D scene, model, and character generation pair that with text to animation which is also being worked on and we've at least taken the first steps towards that goal.
MuffinFlavored 4y ago
how is this different than git cloning an already done hello world style app/using a blog article with a code sample?
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  You can ask the bot to flesh out the code and implement new features (roughly) in seconds. For example, if you have a notes app, you could ask the bot to write code that integrates it with existing calendar apps, and it'd take less than a minute to get you close.
  - MuffinFlavored 4y ago
    > and it'd take less than a minute to get you close. Have you actually tried this yourself? I have probably... 300+ ChatGPT chats/sessions past 30 days (aka, I actually use it). I have 0 faith it would actually spit out anything error-free / working.
    - dpkirchner 4y ago
      Yeah, I've had success, and it has either produced useful code or nearly useful code. I use it to refactor functions and write regexes, tedious stuff.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  1. You don't have to know about the existence of such repos 2. You don't have to find a good blog article that works for your specific purpose 3. You can ask for changes to the code like "translate this code to python" "I want to use Azure instead of AWS" "add a database so I can save player scores" etc. and it will both write the code and explain what it did. 4. You can ask for elaboration if you don't understand something, it can describe code or it can further explain written text. 5. It can explain why you're getting an error message after you change something and suggest a way to fix it. 7. If you have a feature you want to add but don't know how you can just ask it and it will show you how to implement the feature and how to integrate it into the existing code. There's a lot more, too much to list but every one of these is far more useful than just cloning a repo and following an article.
ChatGTP 4y ago
Pretty much everything you described could be done pretty easily already by anyone half inclined to do so. If there was any point in doing it, people would’ve already done it 1000x, the LLM adds no value here.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  Isn't this misunderstanding the point of an AI assistant? The idea is to have AI do the same things that people can do. The benefit is they do it a lot faster and cost a lot less and can work 24/7.
skybrian 4y ago
I was able to use GPT4 to write a small, self-contained JavaScript function and it worked okay. But writing out the function is painfully slow, particularly if you want to iterate. Which you’ll need to do because sometimes it introduces bugs. You can tell it to fix them and it can, but then you have to wait.
- bayan1234 4y ago
  For this reason, I use gpt4 mostly just to start off new functions and then I edit them myself. It would be awesome if gpt4 could be made to edit the code and therefore, it didn’t have to regenerate it from scratch every time. The regeneration also chews up a lot of the token limit, so it forgets crucial parts earlier on in the conversation.
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    I've found that copying the result of one session to the next can work pretty well (like when you hit token* limits), especially if you have the bot include comments.
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    I've had luck with telling it to just rewrite a certain part of the code. You can copy and paste the relevant part and ask it to just rewrite that or you can direct it using natural language, you just have to be specific. If the chat is getting too long you can also copy just the important parts or the code so far into a new chat and start from there.
toxicFork 4y ago
Tbh for clash of clans, if it can set up the server infrastructure etc, then that will be quite scary. The scariest thing is that... I did use Chatgpt to set up an aws cloud formation stack for a lambda function, and it gave me the right file to sync. So... Yeah, it's not that many steps to a "text to (web|mobile) app generator" solution. Uh.. I will get to work.
- maccard 4y ago
  I can Google a cloudformation stack for a lambda and get an answer [0] in about as long as it takes an LLM to generate one. That said, as a programmer I'm not paid to copy from Google or stack overflow, I'm paid to figure out if it's working or not. As an example, ask chatgpt to generate a lambda template with 16GB of memory as Nd see what it does. Until we see chatgpt figuring out how to fix issues like that, I'm not worried. [0] https://iamondemand.com/blog/how-to-deploy-your-lambda-functions-with-cloudformation/ https://iamondemand.com/blog/how-to-deploy-your-lambda-funct...
  - toxicFork 4y ago
    It says this, is it ok? I can check when I get home ChatGPT: Below is an AWS CloudFormation YAML template for creating an AWS Lambda function with 16GB of memory: ```yaml AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09' Description: 'AWS CloudFormation Lambda Function Template with 16GB Memory' Resources: LambdaFunctionRole: Type: 'AWS::IAM::Role' Properties: AssumeRolePolicyDocument: Version: '2012-10-17' Statement: - Effect: Allow Principal: Service: - lambda.amazonaws.com Action: - sts:AssumeRole Path: / Policies: - PolicyName: LambdaExecutionPolicy PolicyDocument: Version: '2012-10-17' Statement: - Effect: Allow Action: - logs:CreateLogGroup - logs:CreateLogStream - logs:PutLogEvents Resource: 'arn:aws:logs:::*' LambdaFunction: Type: 'AWS::Lambda::Function' Properties: FunctionName: MyLambdaFunction Runtime: python3.9 Role: !GetAtt LambdaFunctionRole.Arn Handler: lambda_function.lambda_handler MemorySize: 16384 Timeout: 300 Code: ZipFile: | import json def lambda_handler(event, context): return { 'statusCode': 200, 'body': json.dumps('Hello from Lambda with 16GB memory!') } ``` This CloudFormation template creates an IAM role and a Lambda function with 16GB (16384MB) of memory. The Lambda function runtime is Python 3.9, but you can change this to another runtime if necessary. The code block contains a basic Python script for returning a simple message; you can replace this with your own script.
maccard 4y ago
Honestly, I think we're way way way off what you're suggesting about giving it inputs and getting specifications. This blog post shows chatgpt recreating things with very specific instructions, that it has seen before. The hard part of defining requirements is being specific in them, and that's what programmers do. It's pretty common in these threads to see people talking about chatGPT and friends being totally wrong and it not being aware of how wrong it is. > ? Is "LLM, go register me an EC2 instance and configure it not to go over $20/mo, here's my credit card number" totally out of the question? I suspect we are _way_ closer to that than to having it respond to "make me a game like clash of clans".
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  You’re right that it still needs a skilled person to ask the right prompts, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon But if a few people asking the right prompts is all you need, what happens the to other 50-100+ people a game like Clash of Clans would normally employ?
  - oezi 4y ago
    I think ChatGPT is actually better at creating the right prompts than doing the answers to the prompts.
- ineptech 4y ago
  I don't think your intuition is ambitious enough. We have 12 year olds making roguelikes and platformers today, with templates and toolkits. Sure the initial LLM-made apps will suck, the initial everything sucks, but a couple years of progress on something this new will be considerable. We've barely started tuning LLMs for specific use cases! > The hard part of defining requirements is being specific in them True but I don't think you're accounting for iteration. You know the "idea guy" cliche? Today, if/when this "idea guy" hires a team of devs from India to make his million-dollar idea into reality, his inability to write good requirements will lead to a useless app, and the idea guy asking for changes (that are also poorly described) until he runs out of money, right? Now imagine that his "dev team" works for free and can turn around each new set of requirements in minutes rather than months. How long will it take him to learn how to good acceptance criteria? A day? A week? It's hard but not that hard. And a million or two other "idea guys" are doing the same thing, and sharing notes with each other.
oezi 4y ago
I would like to crank this prediction up a bit more. I think we are pretty close that it doesn't make sense to have simple client apps anymore. Why shouldn't the LLM do it all? Let's say a simple single purpose web app such as Calendly. Why should I pay for such a service if I can just ask the LLM to create the entire app for me? In TFA, the author let the LLM create an ics file. Why shouldn't the LLM also spawn a REST endpoint and serve stuff from it matching my prompt?
- ineptech 4y ago
  I agree, people thinking about using LLMs to make apps that they can then sell are missing the forest for the trees. The more interesting question is, once non-technical people are able to auto-generate their own apps, what backend will they use and how will they handle auth? The easiest default option today is "cloud services, and 'log in with facebook' oauth" but we can hope for better...
moffkalast 4y ago
ChatGPT, Pls make website, all responsive like, w/ BIG pictures ooo, use my fav fonts, also fancy menus with whoosh on, load fast pls. Thanks, Human PS, no bugs :)
- 93po 4y ago
  make me a website that looks like apple's website but for my pizza food cart

throwaway9870 4y ago

How long until I can make my own movie like Star Wars, but with my story line and my characters? Serious question, does anyone have has insights into this problem?

Sai_ 4y ago
I want to do this for my kid - inject him as a character in kids stories and songs.
throwaway4aday 4y ago
Probably not very long, look into ControlNET for video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FZuJdJGFfE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FZuJdJGFfE It's far from movie quality right now but there are a lot of people working on this sort of thing. People are also exploring text to 3D scene, model, and character generation pair that with text to animation which is also being worked on and we've at least taken the first steps towards that goal.

MuffinFlavored 4y ago

how is this different than git cloning an already done hello world style app/using a blog article with a code sample?

dpkirchner 4y ago
You can ask the bot to flesh out the code and implement new features (roughly) in seconds. For example, if you have a notes app, you could ask the bot to write code that integrates it with existing calendar apps, and it'd take less than a minute to get you close.
- MuffinFlavored 4y ago
  > and it'd take less than a minute to get you close. Have you actually tried this yourself? I have probably... 300+ ChatGPT chats/sessions past 30 days (aka, I actually use it). I have 0 faith it would actually spit out anything error-free / working.
  - dpkirchner 4y ago
    Yeah, I've had success, and it has either produced useful code or nearly useful code. I use it to refactor functions and write regexes, tedious stuff.
throwaway4aday 4y ago
1. You don't have to know about the existence of such repos 2. You don't have to find a good blog article that works for your specific purpose 3. You can ask for changes to the code like "translate this code to python" "I want to use Azure instead of AWS" "add a database so I can save player scores" etc. and it will both write the code and explain what it did. 4. You can ask for elaboration if you don't understand something, it can describe code or it can further explain written text. 5. It can explain why you're getting an error message after you change something and suggest a way to fix it. 7. If you have a feature you want to add but don't know how you can just ask it and it will show you how to implement the feature and how to integrate it into the existing code. There's a lot more, too much to list but every one of these is far more useful than just cloning a repo and following an article.

ChatGTP 4y ago

Pretty much everything you described could be done pretty easily already by anyone half inclined to do so. If there was any point in doing it, people would’ve already done it 1000x, the LLM adds no value here.

throwaway4aday 4y ago
Isn't this misunderstanding the point of an AI assistant? The idea is to have AI do the same things that people can do. The benefit is they do it a lot faster and cost a lot less and can work 24/7.

skybrian 4y ago

I was able to use GPT4 to write a small, self-contained JavaScript function and it worked okay. But writing out the function is painfully slow, particularly if you want to iterate. Which you’ll need to do because sometimes it introduces bugs. You can tell it to fix them and it can, but then you have to wait.

bayan1234 4y ago
For this reason, I use gpt4 mostly just to start off new functions and then I edit them myself. It would be awesome if gpt4 could be made to edit the code and therefore, it didn’t have to regenerate it from scratch every time. The regeneration also chews up a lot of the token limit, so it forgets crucial parts earlier on in the conversation.
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  I've found that copying the result of one session to the next can work pretty well (like when you hit token* limits), especially if you have the bot include comments.
- throwaway4aday 4y ago
  I've had luck with telling it to just rewrite a certain part of the code. You can copy and paste the relevant part and ask it to just rewrite that or you can direct it using natural language, you just have to be specific. If the chat is getting too long you can also copy just the important parts or the code so far into a new chat and start from there.

toxicFork 4y ago

Tbh for clash of clans, if it can set up the server infrastructure etc, then that will be quite scary. The scariest thing is that... I did use Chatgpt to set up an aws cloud formation stack for a lambda function, and it gave me the right file to sync. So... Yeah, it's not that many steps to a "text to (web|mobile) app generator" solution. Uh.. I will get to work.

maccard 4y ago
I can Google a cloudformation stack for a lambda and get an answer [0] in about as long as it takes an LLM to generate one. That said, as a programmer I'm not paid to copy from Google or stack overflow, I'm paid to figure out if it's working or not. As an example, ask chatgpt to generate a lambda template with 16GB of memory as Nd see what it does. Until we see chatgpt figuring out how to fix issues like that, I'm not worried. [0] https://iamondemand.com/blog/how-to-deploy-your-lambda-functions-with-cloudformation/ https://iamondemand.com/blog/how-to-deploy-your-lambda-funct...
- toxicFork 4y ago
  It says this, is it ok? I can check when I get home ChatGPT: Below is an AWS CloudFormation YAML template for creating an AWS Lambda function with 16GB of memory: ```yaml AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09' Description: 'AWS CloudFormation Lambda Function Template with 16GB Memory' Resources: LambdaFunctionRole: Type: 'AWS::IAM::Role' Properties: AssumeRolePolicyDocument: Version: '2012-10-17' Statement: - Effect: Allow Principal: Service: - lambda.amazonaws.com Action: - sts:AssumeRole Path: / Policies: - PolicyName: LambdaExecutionPolicy PolicyDocument: Version: '2012-10-17' Statement: - Effect: Allow Action: - logs:CreateLogGroup - logs:CreateLogStream - logs:PutLogEvents Resource: 'arn:aws:logs:::*' LambdaFunction: Type: 'AWS::Lambda::Function' Properties: FunctionName: MyLambdaFunction Runtime: python3.9 Role: !GetAtt LambdaFunctionRole.Arn Handler: lambda_function.lambda_handler MemorySize: 16384 Timeout: 300 Code: ZipFile: | import json def lambda_handler(event, context): return { 'statusCode': 200, 'body': json.dumps('Hello from Lambda with 16GB memory!') } ``` This CloudFormation template creates an IAM role and a Lambda function with 16GB (16384MB) of memory. The Lambda function runtime is Python 3.9, but you can change this to another runtime if necessary. The code block contains a basic Python script for returning a simple message; you can replace this with your own script.

maccard 4y ago

Honestly, I think we're way way way off what you're suggesting about giving it inputs and getting specifications. This blog post shows chatgpt recreating things with very specific instructions, that it has seen before. The hard part of defining requirements is being specific in them, and that's what programmers do. It's pretty common in these threads to see people talking about chatGPT and friends being totally wrong and it not being aware of how wrong it is. > ? Is "LLM, go register me an EC2 instance and configure it not to go over $20/mo, here's my credit card number" totally out of the question? I suspect we are _way_ closer to that than to having it respond to "make me a game like clash of clans".

spaceman_2020 4y ago
You’re right that it still needs a skilled person to ask the right prompts, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon But if a few people asking the right prompts is all you need, what happens the to other 50-100+ people a game like Clash of Clans would normally employ?
- oezi 4y ago
  I think ChatGPT is actually better at creating the right prompts than doing the answers to the prompts.
ineptech 4y ago
I don't think your intuition is ambitious enough. We have 12 year olds making roguelikes and platformers today, with templates and toolkits. Sure the initial LLM-made apps will suck, the initial everything sucks, but a couple years of progress on something this new will be considerable. We've barely started tuning LLMs for specific use cases! > The hard part of defining requirements is being specific in them True but I don't think you're accounting for iteration. You know the "idea guy" cliche? Today, if/when this "idea guy" hires a team of devs from India to make his million-dollar idea into reality, his inability to write good requirements will lead to a useless app, and the idea guy asking for changes (that are also poorly described) until he runs out of money, right? Now imagine that his "dev team" works for free and can turn around each new set of requirements in minutes rather than months. How long will it take him to learn how to good acceptance criteria? A day? A week? It's hard but not that hard. And a million or two other "idea guys" are doing the same thing, and sharing notes with each other.

oezi 4y ago

I would like to crank this prediction up a bit more. I think we are pretty close that it doesn't make sense to have simple client apps anymore. Why shouldn't the LLM do it all? Let's say a simple single purpose web app such as Calendly. Why should I pay for such a service if I can just ask the LLM to create the entire app for me? In TFA, the author let the LLM create an ics file. Why shouldn't the LLM also spawn a REST endpoint and serve stuff from it matching my prompt?

ineptech 4y ago
I agree, people thinking about using LLMs to make apps that they can then sell are missing the forest for the trees. The more interesting question is, once non-technical people are able to auto-generate their own apps, what backend will they use and how will they handle auth? The easiest default option today is "cloud services, and 'log in with facebook' oauth" but we can hope for better...

moffkalast 4y ago

ChatGPT, Pls make website, all responsive like, w/ BIG pictures ooo, use my fav fonts, also fancy menus with whoosh on, load fast pls. Thanks, Human PS, no bugs :)

93po 4y ago
make me a website that looks like apple's website but for my pizza food cart