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The gap between “understanding the problem” and “coming up with a solution” has become a lot narrower over the years. 1. To do anything interesting and at any

The gap between “understanding the problem” and “coming up with a solution” has become a lot narrower over the years. 1. To do anything interesting and at any speed on my Apple //e I had to know assembly. 2. Then I got a Mac in 1992 and the original Mac Toolbox routines could do a lot from a higher level language. 3. Then Visual Basic made graphical programs easier and later WinForms, C# etc. 4. Then AWS made provisioning infrastructure a matter of just writing a bunch of yaml 5. Now that LLMs exist and ChatGPT is well trained on AWS APIs in various languages, I can use natural language and it spits out code that works 95% of the time with only slight tweaks if any.

benj111 4y ago
I'd state it more as, you don't have to reinvent to foundations to solve a new problem. If your problem is writing a link list, you still have to understand linked lists. If your problem just happens to be solved by linked lists, you can rely on a library. Re point 5. If debugging is twice as hard as writing code. How long before AI becomes half as intelligent as the average programmer making said programs undebuggable by the average programmer? Is it a good thing to have black boxes writing black boxes?
- owl57 4y ago
  > How long before AI becomes half as intelligent as the average programmer making said programs undebuggable by the average programmer? It doesn't work this way. A programmer with a bit of experience knows to curb the desire for cleverness and write code they — and their teammates, probably having comparable intelligence and even less knowledge about specific code — can debug. Unless they are on a coffee trip and hacking on a cool weekend project, of course. Now that's another question, what in the hell will AI's weekend projects be.
  - benj111 4y ago
    >A programmer with a bit of experience knows to curb the desire for cleverness Are you suggesting AI will know to curb it's cleverness so that mere humans can understand it???
    - owl57 4y ago
      Setting aside all that debate about future AI agency and focusing on currently known mode of operation, why not. I haven't tested, but GPT-4 may already know enough to act on "this part of my/your code is too clever, please rewrite it simpler" and "please add this feature to that program, and don't be too clever".
      - scarface74 4y ago
        GPT3 could do that.
      - benj111 4y ago
        You're suggesting that "too clever" is a 'known unknown'. If it's an unknown unknown how can you spot the too clever thing to request that it's simplified? Edit: further, that assumes an AIs definition of simple matches that of a human programmer. If there's anything we've learnt recently, AI doesn't think like humans.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
Aren't the two always the same thing? I'll even go so far as to say you don't understand a problem if its solution does not appear childishly trivial.
- scarface74 4y ago
  You don’t see the gap between “I want a natural language chatbot” and being able to create ChatGPT?
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Right, the gap is a whole lot deeper understanding of the problem than "1 chatgpt plx", probably starting with understanding just what chatgpt is.
wruza 4y ago
Each of these steps made computation increasingly more expensive cycle- and power-wise. We counteracted that with Moore’s for a while, then had to go “scalable”. It worked because it was still cheaper than hiring an employee. I bet that LLMs will create another level of bloat industry where computation will be as expensive as making a human to do the same thing, because there will be no human-can-do-it constraint anymore. This promise of “AI will create cool software” is akin to “robots will fly in cars in vertical cities” of 19/20th century scifi. All we got is worse traffic and exponentially expensive housing.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I bought my first laptop in 1996. It was definitely much less efficient power wise than my ARM 15 inch Mac. It could barely last 2 hours on battery. My current laptop can easily last two workdays (16 hours) without being plugged in doing normal work.
andrei_says_ 4y ago
I continue to use heroku because I’ll never be able to “write a bunch of yaml” matching my needs. I don’t want to even enter that world of agony.

benj111 4y ago

I'd state it more as, you don't have to reinvent to foundations to solve a new problem. If your problem is writing a link list, you still have to understand linked lists. If your problem just happens to be solved by linked lists, you can rely on a library. Re point 5. If debugging is twice as hard as writing code. How long before AI becomes half as intelligent as the average programmer making said programs undebuggable by the average programmer? Is it a good thing to have black boxes writing black boxes?

owl57 4y ago
> How long before AI becomes half as intelligent as the average programmer making said programs undebuggable by the average programmer? It doesn't work this way. A programmer with a bit of experience knows to curb the desire for cleverness and write code they — and their teammates, probably having comparable intelligence and even less knowledge about specific code — can debug. Unless they are on a coffee trip and hacking on a cool weekend project, of course. Now that's another question, what in the hell will AI's weekend projects be.
- benj111 4y ago
  >A programmer with a bit of experience knows to curb the desire for cleverness Are you suggesting AI will know to curb it's cleverness so that mere humans can understand it???
  - owl57 4y ago
    Setting aside all that debate about future AI agency and focusing on currently known mode of operation, why not. I haven't tested, but GPT-4 may already know enough to act on "this part of my/your code is too clever, please rewrite it simpler" and "please add this feature to that program, and don't be too clever".
    - scarface74 4y ago
      GPT3 could do that.
    - benj111 4y ago
      You're suggesting that "too clever" is a 'known unknown'. If it's an unknown unknown how can you spot the too clever thing to request that it's simplified? Edit: further, that assumes an AIs definition of simple matches that of a human programmer. If there's anything we've learnt recently, AI doesn't think like humans.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

Aren't the two always the same thing? I'll even go so far as to say you don't understand a problem if its solution does not appear childishly trivial.

scarface74 4y ago
You don’t see the gap between “I want a natural language chatbot” and being able to create ChatGPT?
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Right, the gap is a whole lot deeper understanding of the problem than "1 chatgpt plx", probably starting with understanding just what chatgpt is.

wruza 4y ago

Each of these steps made computation increasingly more expensive cycle- and power-wise. We counteracted that with Moore’s for a while, then had to go “scalable”. It worked because it was still cheaper than hiring an employee. I bet that LLMs will create another level of bloat industry where computation will be as expensive as making a human to do the same thing, because there will be no human-can-do-it constraint anymore. This promise of “AI will create cool software” is akin to “robots will fly in cars in vertical cities” of 19/20th century scifi. All we got is worse traffic and exponentially expensive housing.

scarface74 4y ago
I bought my first laptop in 1996. It was definitely much less efficient power wise than my ARM 15 inch Mac. It could barely last 2 hours on battery. My current laptop can easily last two workdays (16 hours) without being plugged in doing normal work.

andrei_says_ 4y ago

I continue to use heroku because I’ll never be able to “write a bunch of yaml” matching my needs. I don’t want to even enter that world of agony.