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Having spent a lot of time with GPT-4 recently, it's possible the new generation will not have the same issues we did. For example they can write some code and
by JimmyRuska 4y ago
Having spent a lot of time with GPT-4 recently, it's possible the new generation will not have the same issues we did. For example they can write some code and say, "adjust for best practice".
Then "explain why <my code> needs to be <new code>"
Oh this is called <new concept>, give me an example of it. Give me another example. Give me another example. Give me use cases where this would be better. Give me a short story where it was done my way but it lead to a mishap in production and the protagonist learned <new concept>. Explain it like I'm 5. etc
Basically the new generation is the training neural network, and they can keep flashing context until they absorb the material. Sure, some people are lazy and will go as far as getting something barely working. But superpowers are available for those who fight for their place in the world
- precompute 4y agoSure, you can "flash context", but being able to write code to make the infrastructure that makes LLMs possible is required to sustain this new "ecosystem". I don't think every dev will be equally hit by this new paradigm, it's basically a two-tier system now, the LLM babysitters and the actual competent human coders (whose input probably gets fed into a LLM).
- marginalia_nu 4y agos/LLM/StackOverflow/g and squint, and you're basically describing the preceding decade.
- precompute 4y agoWell, stackoverflow required competent users to participate. There's no need for that any longer. The "gap" will probably be addressed by LLM-designed tools that are only usable via LLMs and bigtech will be more than happy to put their own LLM-designed tools at work for their products, which means there'll be vendor lock at scale, so in the vein of the "digital realm emulating the analog realm" there'll be companies you'd have to specifically train for and none of it would carry over... but this is assuming this current level of progress stagnates for at least the next five years. Sigh...
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago> There's no need for that any longer. I don't think so: LLMs have used Stackoverflow's answers for training. Now, if people would stop going there for questions, people would stop giving answers, so LLMs would have no data to train on for new problems.
- precompute 4y agoI think unless there's a reward system for contributing to LLMs, the internet will mostly be devoid of new content. People will move to walled gardens. All you need is a short demo showing how something like GPT-4 with the internet access plugin can make a profile of you based on your publically available comments.
- digging 4y ago> LLMs have used Stackoverflow's answers for training have used, perfect tense. But future tense? who knows. We shouldn't assume future LLMs won't be able to parse documentation of new libraries and extrapolate full, detailed implementations.
- Closi 4y agoThis assumes that a future version won't have super-human coding abilities which can write code vastly better than any human. The language it writes in might not look anything like our current languages, because it might be able to write highly efficient code that it would be too slow and impractical for a human to write, and refactoring the entire codebase might happen automatically overnight rather than slowly across months. In that world the skill won't be to code, but to accurately describe software/business requirements. Unless a future AI can do that too.
- TheOtherHobbes 4y agoThere always seems to be a lot of "We Can Do The Thing We Do Today But Faster" in these comments. It misses that we won't be doing Old Thing. We'll be doing New Thing. It's not a step change in an old medium. It's a qualitatively different change to a completely new medium, whose properties haven't yet been revealed. It's like waving an iPhone at Babbage. An iPhone is so far ahead of an Analytical Engine that it offers a completely new and unimaginable set of affordances. It's also faster, smaller, and more reliable, with much more memory - which is an interesting implementation footnote, but incidental to the fact that from a user POV it's a completely different class of device.
- precompute 4y agoI agree, but that's a long time away, maybe five or six years. Until then (and even after) we'll need people that can interface with lower-level systems and also have prior experience. This also doesn't take into account countries that will effectively ban usage of companies like "Open"AI (which "Open"AI will be more than willing to enforce), and on top of a possible thin-client revolution, we'll see demand for human coders in the new tech-ghetto parts of the world.
- Closi 4y agoCountries would be insane to ban companies like OpenAI. What a huge foot-gun that would be! Imagine if a country banned computers in 1979 to protect jobs, other countries would have run circles around them and it would have had huge economic implications.
- jlnho 4y agoOT: Are you _the_ Jimmy Ruska (jimmyrcom on YouTube)? If so, thanks for your videos. I remember watching those as a teen, they were super inspiring and solidified my decision to pursue a career in IT.
- lelanthran 4y ago> Having spent a lot of time with GPT-4 recently, it's possible the new generation will not have the same issues we did. For example they can write some code and say, "adjust for best practice". Not iteratively forever, the only feedback it will (eventually) get is it's own feedback, because humans will be using the AI best practices, and what it deems as best practice is almost certainly going to be too opaque to us mere mortals.
- gonzo41 4y agoNah, it'll still be human readable. that was the whole point of C and Java. Let the computers to the hard stuff in bytecode or asm. Compiler development will get even more complex though.
- throwthrowuknow 4y agoTraining data is key, a lot of people will be employed in creating, curating, and labeling it. They will utilize AI to help them but it will be a partner. If AI reaches the point of creating and using its own training data then you can hang up your hat and call it a day because no human input or work will be needed at that point.
- methodin 4y agoYeah kind of an interesting journey. We went from people writing content for people, to bots writing content for people, to people curating content for bots (ultimately for people). The only permutation left is bots curating/writing content for bots and people are consuming only bot-generated content. In a way we are partially there since some content that was in these models was written by bots.
- jsty 4y ago> Then "explain why <my code> needs to be <new code>" It would be nice, but until there's a breakthrough on having LLMs / other models generate, maintain and walk the user through a representation of their reasoning, these explanations are likely no more reliable than a random StackOverflow answer - except without the benefit of other users scoring / picking holes in the answer
- w4ffl35 4y agoHave you tried it yet? It is significantly better than a stackoverflow answer. I've been using copilot since release and have now integrated chatgpt into that workflow (thankfully copilot using chatgpt 4 and some tricks I figured out to treat copilot more like a chat bot are making it so I can avoid the chatgpt browser).
- sokoloff 4y agoIt may be significantly better than a random stackoverflow answer, but I haven’t seen it as being better than the top-voted stackoverflow answer (at least not without significant curation/prompting).
- w4ffl35 4y agoi think maybe you're using ai wrong. its not akin to stackoverflow answers, its more akin to a jr programmer that can bang out some code for you while you go to the kitchen or bathroom and then you fix a few mistakes and integrate it with your larger project
- sokoloff 4y agoI have played with it a small amount. If I need to center a div in CSS, it’s faster than me remembering how to do that. For anything significantly higher complexity, I don’t find that typing is anywhere near the rate-limiting factor. Figuring out how to decompose the problem, how the code should be structured overall, and other high-level concerns take far time/effort than banging out boilerplate. Now, if I wanted to pretend to be a junior developer for three different companies at once, it would be a heaven-sent technological marvel.
- latexr 4y ago> For example they can write some code and say, "adjust for best practice". And they’ll get code which isn’t good, just a parroting of bad ideas widely disseminated. A bit like Casey Muratori’s concept of fake optimisation: https://youtu.be/pgoetgxecw8?t=600 https://youtu.be/pgoetgxecw8?t=600
- usgroup 4y agoWhat you describe is basically how coders coming up in the last 10 years have been learning -- specific context from StackOverflow or wherever. Contrast this to the hierarchical textbook learning which came before it the intention of which (I think) typically was to impart knowledge which generalises well. I think what we have now is more productive but results in worse programmers. I.e. you fix the thing in context, but learn little out of context and have to go back to the source of answers when the next thing comes up. The rate at which answers are sought increases, doesn't decrease. Etc.