20 ms·

The Leverage of LLMs for Individuals

547 points by mazzystar 3y ago

msoad 3y ago
I started using GPT-4 for writing ESLint rules whenever I do a code review and I feel it can be an ESLint rule. Simply give it the instance of "bad" and "good" code and let GPT-4 write both the ESLint rule and the unit tests for you. Initially I did a little touch up on the code before submitting. Like using `array.at(-1)` instead of `array[array.length - 1]` but now I do that with GPT-4 too. I say "try using the latest JS features like Array.prototype.at" and it finds other nice things to do too!
andai 3y ago
> I even think that joining any team is a kind of slowdown. Only by sailing alone in a small boat can one maintain agility. I'm reminded of this proverb: If you need to go fast, go alone. If you need to go far, to together.
- mazzystar 3y ago
  I think it depends on whether you want to go wider or go deeper
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Deep-diving submersibles can only hold a small number of crew. They often require a lot of support personnel, though. Same with going deep on a research/development effort.
- moffkalast 3y ago
  > If you need to go far, have an AI carry you. Modernizing that proverb.
  - eloisant 3y ago
    This has been true for any new tool, you can do more alone using those tools. And you can now do alone things that could only be done with a small team of people. But still, using those tools you can achieve more with a team than alone.
RivieraKid 3y ago
The post says there's a huge difference between GPT-4 and ChatGPT? But which version of ChatGPT?
- mazzystar 3y ago
  ChatGPT March Version, I think.
  - cosgrove 3y ago
    But if you're a paid subscriber you can access GPT4 through ChatGPT's interface. Are you saying there's a difference between using the GPT4 model alone vs. the GPT4 model in the ChatGPT interface? If so, could you please clarify with an example?
    - mazzystar 3y ago
      That's right. I just went to look and it looks like ChatGPT has been updated to the May version. But in terms of previous experience: ChatGPT's code is almost unusable, it always ignores the most basic logic, and I only use it to write short scripts. But GPT-4, even if it contains multiple files referencing each other, it gives code that I don't even need to do Code review.
      - arielweisberg 3y ago
        I have had the opposite experience. Many domains where it can’t produce correct code (counting BitSet, WatchOS apps), or doesn’t even begin to understand (distributed consensus). When it works it is great. When it doesn’t gap can be large. When you ask it to correct itself it will make new mistakes and keep alternating between different mistakes and omissions. I haven’t tried it yet on a real codebase like say a database. Is it even possible to give it that context?
    - simonw 3y ago
      My understanding is that the author was talking about using GPT-4 via the ChatGPT interface. That's where the 25 messages every 3 hours limit comes from. When they compare it to regular ChatGPT they are comparing GPT-4 to GPT-3.5 turbo.
geek_at 3y ago
Learning something with GTP-4 is so much more fun than using google/Stack Overflow. It's like having a tutor that knows your code and gives you hints and solutions based on your actual project. It's a real game changer for learning
- smeagull 3y ago
  Yeah, but how do you get access to 4?
  - jstx1 3y ago
    You need to pay for ChatGPT Plus, or sign up for their API (there’s a waitlist).
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      FWIW, I got API access quite quickly. Applied March 20, got access March 27. My application was only some 2 line bullshit, their example for "why do you want access" rewritten.
      - chpatrick 3y ago
        I applied March 16 and I'm still waiting.
        Semaphor 3y ago
        Huh, that’s weird. I thought it was simply generally quick. Did you already have a paid account?
        Veen 3y ago
        I got API access to GPT-4 almost immediately too, but I know people who have been waiting weeks. On the other hand, I don't have plugin access on ChatGPT yet, even though I applied for that as soon as it came out. There's probably quite a lot of luck involved.
jxf 3y ago
This is an interesting view, but I reached a different conclusion than the author. If GPT-4 (and successors, presumably), are so empowering, then leveraging them as a collective could potentially be even more powerful. We shouldn't underestimate the power of highly enabled teams. As another commenter wrote: "if you want to go fast, go alone; if you need to go far, go together".
bulldog13 3y ago
Anyone have any good examples or tutorials of specifically how to use ChatGPT for greenfield code development ?
- andai 3y ago
  I asked it to design and implement an entire software system. I just copy-pasted the output and it (almost) worked the first time. (It ran out of context window and started forgetting the design; if I'd started each message with the design and class layout it would have probably worked the first time!) Specifically I asked it for a design, then a main class, then for each of the other class files. (This process could probably be automated.)
- padolsey 3y ago
  I usually ask it to write me a nextjs app and deploy it to vercel. It gives me a few commands and files to plop in the right directories. E.g. `npx create-next-app foo; cd foo; ...; vercel --prod;`. Often I only make a couple changes then 5 mins later it can be deployed for free on vercel. Eg, it took me a couple mins to create a lil app to enable a user to drag/drop words of your sentence. I asked chatgpt (gpt-4) the following: "Write me a nextjs app (and deploy to vercel) that shows the sentence 'Anyone have any good examples or tutorials of specifically how to use ChatGPT for greenfield code development ?' but each word is draggable and re-arrangeable such that a user can drag any word to anywhere in the sentence. Add a randomize button too." See the result here : ) https://dndexamplehn.vercel.app/ https://dndexamplehn.vercel.app/ It's incredibly empowering to be able to easily spin up little proofs-of-concepts or bootstrapping larger projects. I think all the naysayers have not experienced its power yet.
  - julianeon 3y ago
    I've thought it would be cool to see something like this: 1. Go on Twitter and find a famous account (for visibility). Maybe they say something like, "The data shows..." 2. Pop into ChatGPT and create a data viz. 3. Deploy to Vercel. 4. Go back to Twitter, post the link, enhance the convo, naturally gain followers in exchange for providing that value.
usrusr 3y ago
“48 hours of conversation with GPT-4“ Heh, sounds like a novel form of torture. The author probably means 48 hours total over a (much) longer time, and it had all been an enjoyable ride of turbocharged learning and discovery, but that's not how it reads to my eyes.
- bronco21016 3y ago
  GPT-4 is still limited to 25 queries/3 hours and that is likely why it took longer.
  - pugio 3y ago
    Every 3 hours. But also, if you have API access you can use the OpenAI playground to query GPT-4 as much as you want. Sure, you pay a cost (per token), but if you're willing to front the bill you can move pretty quickly.
    - bronco21016 3y ago
      Typo on phone, fixed it. Thanks!
    - akiselev 3y ago
      The API rate limit is 40k tokens per minute (I’ve hit it with a personal project).
      - ukuina 3y ago
        That's high enough for most users, I reckon.
        zoogeny 3y ago
        40k tokens per minute is enough for most users is the next "640K ought to be enough for anybody"
        3y ago
mrbgty 3y ago
>If you are an individual developer, the leverage it provides might be 10 times greater, but when you work for a company, that number might be only 2 These numbers are arbitrary and if you're looking for leverage, a company with a lot of customers is a good way to find it.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
This post reminded me that I’m still somewhat surprised ChatGPT-like systems did not arise out of China first due to their massive investment funds for AI and their base of stem talent. Once they catch-up their censors will have a super power and people will have their writings censored before they hit submit. Will be an interesting decade.
- FooBarWidget 3y ago
  This is already possible using simple Bayesian filters.
- prepend 3y ago
  > somewhat surprised ChatGPT-like systems did not arise out of China first due to their massive investment funds for AI and their base of stem talent. Does China innovate in this way? I think software is not a linear function of money in, value out. Inventing new programs and techniques is interesting as I’m sure what the spark is, and it certainly takes money, but that’s not the most important part. I remember reading in Masters of Doom about how John Carmack came up with some of the innovations id software used and was amazed that he, alone, came up with stuff that large, well-funded teams could not. I expect that China could have invested its entire GDP into stem and AI for the past 10 years and would not have came up with LLMs and ChatGPT. Or perhaps they did, but kept it secret and would never release it as a product to the public. But I believe the former based on the few software companies and few software innovations coming out of China in the past 20 years.
- shanebellone 3y ago
  IMO China is a "long-term country". LLM does not lead to General Intelligence. While the former is profitable (financially and socially), the latter is the holy grail. Time will name the winner.
  - chaxor 3y ago
    It heavily depends upon the definition of general intelligence, because we haven't really settled on a definition as of yet. In some circles (of course the ones from Microsoft) the list of requirements is very close to being met by some of the more sophisticated multimodal models (GPT-4 et al). General intelligence is a strange question because it's more about the data/environment than the architecture, (obviously if it were about theoretical capabilities of architecture, AGI was found ages ago). Much of the LLM capabilities have to do with the generality baked into language. Pairing that with the well known proof that GNNs are dynamic programmers, you can get some very nice properties directly from the setup.
dsign 3y ago
I was watching yesterday the 2006 movie "The prestige", with incredibly atmospheric locales that feel so alien. And yet, that world is but one hundred years away. It wasn't until 1934 that the Public Utility Holding Company Act recognized electricity as a utility. Less than one hundred years after that, we have managed to juice out a general digital intellect from humanity's joint efforts. Let's see if we survive the next one hundred years, but boy, way to go!
- jfk13 3y ago
  > a general digital intellect That's a pretty bold claim.
Karunamon 3y ago
The confusion in terms called out here (and even demonstrated) is probably not to OpenAI's benefit and I am surprised they haven't spent more effort in trying to correct that. ChatGPT is a website that lets you do chat completion [1] against LLM models, and it exposes some extra functions like plug-ins if you are lucky enough to be white listed for them. GPT 3.5 and GPT 4 are the actual models. Someone telling you that they did something cool with ChatGPT probably means GPT 3.5 [1]: https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/chat https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/chat
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > Someone telling you that they did something cool with ChatGPT probably means GPT 3. The confusion is that ChatGPT is using GPT-3.5 by default, but if you pay the $20/month subscription price, you can switch it over to GPT-4 (with query limits). Usually, when someone is telling you they did something really cool with ChatGPT, they're actually using GPT-4. An extra layer of confusion is the API access: GPT-3.5-turbo and GPT-4 models are both optimized to be used in chat, which is somewhat different than earlier text completion models. Because of it, people using GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 via API access (possibly with one of the "alternative ChatGPT frontends"), will often also say they're using "ChatGPT". This is almost, but not completely accurate - the actual ChatGPT contains a bunch of hidden "features" (hidden prompt, extra moderation), that are mostly detrimental to the output/experience you get.
  - jmiskovic 3y ago
    Correcting the correction of a correction: The chat interface is no longer using GPT-3.5, since May 3rd. What is the default model called? I have no idea. The release notes page [1] calls it ChatGPT model, the bottom of chat interface calls it "ChatGPT May 3 version". Also people usually call out when they use GPT-4, but in the end you can only assume and be wrong 50% of time. [1] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-...
    - Karunamon 3y ago
bostonsre 3y ago
Has anyone been able to use it to effectively build more than a green field poc? It's absolutely great for that, but it's been a little clunky when trying to iterate when the context gets too large or when trying to add stuff to am existing system.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Has anyone been able to use it to effectively build more than a green field poc? It's absolutely great for that, but it's been a little clunky when trying to iterate when the context gets too large or when trying to add stuff to am existing system. I'd like to see that too. Just this morning I got it to generate a whole lot of boilerplate. Then it appeared to get dementia: forgot which language the boilerplate was for, when I reminded it it then started creating type aliases for no reason, when I reminded it that the previous snippet (which was the first part of a single long snippet) didn't need those types, it switched languages again. Very difficult once you get a long enough conversation going (something like 5 prompts in and it starts going haywire in random places).
  - dumpsterlid 3y ago
    [dead]
- andrewljohnson 3y ago
  I use AI to help my productivity while coding a lot. I handle the big system, it spits out code for me where i know what i want but don’t know the libraries/syntax.
- biql 3y ago
  I see limited context and the lack of sandbox dev environment is the main obstacle on way to have more sophisticated usage and faster feedback loop. The value would be greater if it could know everything about the code base, business requirements, related documentation, and, it could even avoid a lot mistakes by simple running type checks and the tests and correct itself before giving the answer.
vemv 3y ago
There's a long gap from: I built a podcast search website to: Staying in any company right now is a negative return. We humans are too easily impressed by tricks, and are too willing to extrapolate them to fantasy land. GPT can certainly accomplish an impressive variety of small tasks. Whether it can build large-scale systems that will power tomorrow's world is uncharted territory. Can you build something meaningful, substantial, robust out of statistical knowledge, without real reasoning behind? If you believe it's possible, where's everyone's array of profitable, newly-founded ventures? Or at least have you automated your job away yet?
- nielsole 3y ago
  > If you believe it's possible, where's everyone's array of profitable, newly-founded ventures? Or at least have you automated your job away yet? Come on now. GPT 4 is not even out for two months. API access is not yet widely available. Legal questions are preventing many conservative players from adoption. How fast do you think progress propagates?
  - throwuwu 3y ago
    The OP better buy some ketchup cause they’ll be eating those words in a few months.
  - nr2x 3y ago
    On top of no generally available API, GPT-4 in ChatGPT is really damn slow right now. Unless you have a special deal (Microsoft) the only performant option is 3.5-turbo. In my experience for coding and text summarization it’s totally fine with a limited benefit from GPT-4, which is more impressive at higher order reasoning and planning.
    - mrtranscendence 3y ago
      Interestingly (or not), Perplexity's GPT-4 chatbot is noticeably faster than ChatGPT-4 for me. I don't find its implementation quite as helpful, though, which is weird I think?
  - 3y ago
anotherpaulg 3y ago
I have also been using GPT as a force multiplier for my coding, especially in areas where I'm less comfortable like frontend. I put together a tool called `aider` for chatting with GPT-4 about code, having it make changes and keeping track of it all in git. It's feeling like a very nice workflow. @mazzystar you might want to give it a try if you have GPT-4 api access: https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider
- mazzystar 3y ago
  Thanks, Will try!
designium 3y ago
I actually feel in the same way of how GPT-4 has increased my capabilities as an individual than for company. It's insane how fast the idea iterations can be and you can actually execute it pretty fast.
collaborative 3y ago
AI tools are absolutely useless once you get past any initial stage in a software development cycle They just can't comprehend what needs to be done even if all that's required are 2 lines of code However, we keep seeing posts from people who don't know html or how to create a chrome extension paternalizing on how we can be much more productive with AI tools. Last I heard a CEO was demanding dev increased productivity or firing some devs because he daw a Youtube video on how easy it is to create a website now
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  > AI tools are absolutely useless once you get past any initial stage in a software development cycle Not sure I agree. The initial stage will be the one where most of high-level, broad thinking happens. Once the cycle starts in the earnest, more and more time is spent on the usual software drudge work. I find GPT-4 excels at helping with this kind of coding. I'm reserving judgement on the higher-level / more abstract aspects of software engineering, as I haven't had a chance to try it. My suspicion is that GPT-4 will excel at helping you think through an issue interactively, but may have trouble actually coming up with whole designs on its own, not unless you spend so much effort crafting a context for it ("getting it up to speed" on your problem space) that you'll quickly find better designs in the process. > Last I heard a CEO was demanding dev increased productivity or firing some devs because he daw a Youtube video on how easy it is to create a website now With wix, squarespace and other brands I consciously try to forget about (in proportion to how much advertising spam from them I see, despite using adblockers everywhere I can), plenty of web devs are having a hard time justifying their salaries. At this point, AI tools aren't even competing with them - they're competing with wix, squarespace, et al.! Still, I hope that CEOs replacing workers with ChatGPT are a myth. If not, that's IMO an idiot thing to do. Not because ChatGPT won't manage to do the job - but because the only model in existence, that has capabilities required to effectively replace humans in some jobs, is owned by a single company, has been available for only two-three months so far, and that's in a limited beta. We don't know yet what the limits of GPT-4 are, how to effectively use it, and at any point OpenAI can just take their access away. At this point, it's a great tool to use while it's available, but it's not something you want to hinge your project/business on mid-to-long-term.
collaborative 3y ago
AI tools are absolutely useless once you get past any initial stage in a software development cycle They just can't comprehend what needs to be done even if all that's required are 2 lines of code However, we keep seeing posts from people who don't know html or how to create a chrome extension paternalizing about how we can be much more productive with AI tools. Last I heard a CEO was demanding dev increased productivity or firing some devs because he saw a Youtube video about how easy it is to create a website now The only usefulness I see is in AI replacing SO. Once SO dries we'll have neither
- valine 3y ago
  This sounds to me like you have no idea how to properly integrate LLMs into your workflow. Just because they’re not useful for changing large code bases doesn’t mean they can’t be valuable. A few examples of things I’ve used LLMs for: Writing bash scripts to automate various parts my workflow Quickly interpreting complex regex Tutoring me on how to use poorly documented APIs Proof reading important emails Everything copilot, writing java docs, auto completing all the cases in a switch statement, etc.
  - l33tman 3y ago
    Could you? Do you have to? Would someone pay you to implement an FPGA design, given that you know nothing about it but have access to GPT-4? In practice, I've found that the advantage it might give you quickly ebbs out. It surely helps filling details and blanks though.
  - DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
    >Tutoring me on how to use poorly documented APIs Can you elaborate on this? I would find it very useful.
    - valine 3y ago
      My current workflow is to copy a bunch of relevant code into GPT4 and then ask it questions about how to use the API. GPT4 is very good at inferring how to use an API, even from code snippets. The key is that you can paste large amounts of unstructured code and GPT4 will make sense of it.
Ethan_Mick 3y ago
> More importantly, it gives me the courage to dream and attempt things beyond my current abilities. This is one of the small things that GPT has pushed me to do. I'm an experienced programmer and grew up playing video games, but I am not a game developer. I've dabbled over the years but can't build anything outside of a tutorial. The other day, using GPT I went through and made a Pixel Dungeon clone using Phaser (JavaScript game engine). It was such a delight. Together we got the game to a working state before I started to change some of the fundamental design, and then GPT started hallucinating pretty badly. When that happened, I stopped for the night, and then just started new focused conversations to add or change a feature, putting in the relevant code. It's turn-based, with simple AI, enemy monsters, fog of war, line of sight, and a victory/losing condition. Being able to build this in a couple of days is an absolute game-changer, pun intended. I can only imagine the riches of experiences we will have as people are unblocked on skills and can pursue an idea.
- appleaday1 3y ago
  I like how everyone has been using ChatGPT to code in Javascript, as I have done something as well.
  - Ethan_Mick 3y ago
    TypeScript happens to be my current strongest language. I picked Phaser since I wanted to learn the ins and outs of building the game and not need to worry about the language I was writing in. This was also helpful because GPT-4 would still get small things wrong with the TypeScript, but I was able to easily fix those without needing to ask it. If I had tried this in Unity and C# (which I don't know at all), I'd still be figuring out the standard library. I generally recommend learning one new thing at a time when building something new.
  - waboremo 3y ago
    ChatGPT benefits from how abundant languages like Javascript and Python are. When you start diving into the lesser used languages, the struggle becomes real. Even worse if there have been substantial breaking changes in the past ~2 years.
zoogeny 3y ago
> Perhaps soon, documentation and APIs will become GPT-friendly first. I can imagine documentation becoming ChatGPT plugin aware. Like, the automatically generated stuff that comes out of Swagger and the like. Maybe a killer feature for a new API documentation startup?
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
  My dream is that we all adopt tools for detecting when docs have become stale. That risk is one of the big reasons for not writing extensive docs in the first place, so the whole dynamic could change.
lyair1 3y ago
I am happy that so many people get to experience the feeling me and other software engineers feel when we write code. OpenAI democratize some of this feeling and now people that never knew how to code can experience the rush of creating something new using code. In a world where a lot of AI Researchers that develop these amazing models are slowed down by their lack of "normal" engineering skills I think it's very apparent that software engineering goes well beyond writing a snippet of code. Like the internet, stackoverflow, forums and other advances in technology that opened new doors and opportunity and democratized the industry - this is another one, a big one! the smart ones will use this push as an entry point to the software development world rather than looking for an oracle function for software development (which does not exist yet)
- spmurrayzzz 3y ago
  > the smart ones will use this push as an entry point to the software development world rather than looking for an oracle function for software development (which does not exist yet) Very much agree. I think mentorship becomes even more important now. I have a friends that's switching careers and starting to learn software engineering. Just for fun, I back-seated him while he tried to build a really simple app using GPT-4. Even with really fine-tuned prompts, some of which I helped with, the code that was generated was either barely readable, had performance issues, and/or in some cases was just completely broken. At the time, I made the quip that for junior/entry-level folks it's like getting cybernetic implants in your legs before you know how to walk or run.
- the_doctah 3y ago
  People who use ChatGPT to spit out code as a method of learning software engineering are going to be seriously deficient in fundamentals like performance. I've already worked with way too many engineers who copy/paste code without understanding what it does.
  - stasmo 3y ago
    The good news is that those copy/pasters are probably going to be copy/pasting higher quality code if they’re using GPT4.
zackproser 3y ago
What all are you using as your primary interface for ChatGPT et al LLMs? I've had some success with OpenAI's default UI but mostly I've been trying out various community Neovim plugins. I feel strongly that I want an in-IDE pair-programming assistant, but so far I've had at least one or more blocking issues with many of the currently available open source options. NeoAI is great - for example - I've had it working well on multiple machines before - but today after a Neovim / Astronvim update I'm getting errors about my quotas (which are fine) back from the plugin - and I don't really have time to debug that because I need to get some work done :/
- gejose 3y ago
  I've been really liking Raycast on my mac with the ChatGPT plugin - https://www.raycast.com/ https://www.raycast.com/ - https://www.raycast.com/abielzulio/chatgpt https://www.raycast.com/abielzulio/chatgpt I have it set up to open on CMD + Space
- tornato7 3y ago
  I have heard good things about the Genie AI VS Code plugin. (I personally decided against installing it because it's closed source)
gfodor 3y ago
GPT-4 got me through porting a near SoTA image segmenter to the browser and building a prototype UX that uses the webcam to grab decals from the real world in a few hours that prob would have taken me at least 5x longer.
senko 3y ago
> Current documentation is written for human reading, with a mix of text and code blocks that makes copying a poor experience. Perhaps soon, documentation and APIs will become GPT-friendly first. Yes. I have recently annotated my Pydantic models and fields with the explicit intention to use the resulting JSONSchema to inform GPT how to structure some information (in effect, writing a one-off client for an internal API I'm creating). As a happy side effect, this is now better document (information about semantics of the data structure elements is closer to the definition of the structure itself, not in some external Markdown text file or in some walled-off wiki).
- croes 3y ago
  I thought the point of GPT is to be human like and not that humans adapt to GPT.
  - esafak 3y ago
    Humans are limited in their language too, so that's still human :) It's just that you're surrounded by humans who speak your language.
  - lgas 3y ago
    It's a tool. Humans that adapt to any tool they use frequently.
DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
ChatGPT has been useful to me for learning/looking-up a lot of things, although it sometimes drives me crazy. Often I'll want to use libraries which are rapidly developing, and the training data ending at 2021 kills the accuracy. A webcrawler + chatGPT would be incredibly useful. So far I've only found tools designed for the web admin (finetune on your support docs + make a chatbot for users) rather than something designed for the end user.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  I have had success just pasting the relevant documentation for using the library into the chat and telling chatGPT to reference that.
  - DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
    I'm talking about stuff like Bevy where the docs are scattered across multiple web pages. ChatGPT can still be helpful but typically copying/pasting a whole doc, asking a question, reading the answer, is slower than just reading the page myself. And if it's the wrong page, then chatGPT won't help.
- rerx 3y ago
  Have you tried https://www.phind.com https://www.phind.com ?
- iamjackg 3y ago
  Take a look at https://phind.com https://phind.com Being able to search the web allows it to deal with recent information: you can ask it to limit its search to the API documentation for the library you're working with.
  - DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
    Oh this is pretty good, thanks! I do have some non-developer use-cases which this may not work for, but definitely helpful.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
cyrialize 3y ago
I've used ChatGPT for personal project planning. I like to use Trello for personal organization. I just prompt ChatGPT with things I'd like to work on. For example, I've given a prompt akin to: "Can you create for me a plan for organizing my email? It should be a list of tasks to be completed in 15-30 minutes. It should follow the S.M.A.R.T. format." Then I gave it prompts to split all the tasks into single line sentences with a new line in between. You can copy paste this into a card and Trello will ask if you'd like to split it up into multiple cards!
renjimen 3y ago
> Staying in any company right now is a negative return; you are wasting personal leverage. I think it's a bit sad that the only benefit someone can see in their workplace is their salary. Also, I get the feeling this person has never done anything outside of consumer app development with minimal stakeholder interaction. Overall I think it's great we can supercharge our learning and coding capabilities, but it would be naive to think knowledge and coding can let you do anything you want.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > I think it's a bit sad that the only benefit someone can see in their workplace is their salary. It's not the only benefit, but it's the only one that you can't get in some other way. I suspect that very few people -- even people who love their jobs -- would continue working in them if they weren't getting paid.
  - renjimen 3y ago
    Well yeah, but we're unlikely to ever live in a world where there aren't paid jobs. Personally, I enjoy working with people. I may not make as much money as going solo but holistically my work life is improved by having colleagues. I think the same is true for most people. No person is an island.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > I think the same is true for most people. Sure, the same is true for me. But that's also a need that can be filled without working for someone.
      - theonething 3y ago
        Hard agree on this. I think what we're talking about here is having a sense of community or at least human to human interaction. I can think of so many ways to get that without the obligations that come from having a job. I generally enjoy my job but that is far from the main reason I do it. If money was not an issue, there are so many other things in life I would enjoy doing far more not to mention enjoying the general freedom that comes from not needing to work.
justsocrateasin 3y ago
I really liked this article overall, but was very confused by this section - > If you are an individual developer, the leverage it provides might be 10 times greater, but when you work for a company, that number might be only 2. Where do these numbers come from? Did ChatGPT hallucinate them? I don't understand why both can't be true. Why can't I have 10x leverage in my job and use that productive to unlock more time and then further leverage myself as a personal developer? Very strange sentiment here and also a baseless claim IMO.
gmt2027 3y ago
There's a lot of focus on AI taking away jobs. I believe it will constitute an existential threat to a lot of companies. Highly productive solo individuals and very small teams will outcompete large companies by leveraging AI. When capital requirements, transaction and information costs drop dramatically, the optimal size of a firm will change. I believe they will become dramatically smaller.
- bjornsing 3y ago
  > When capital requirements, transaction and information costs drop dramatically, the optimal size of a firm will change. I believe they will become dramatically smaller. I hope so. Oh how I hope so.
anonu 3y ago
Corporations serve a purpose - to organize human labor to fulfill a greater task that usually cannot be completed by an individual. So while I don't disagree that GPT-4 in the hands of a layperson programmer may suddenly turn them into a 10x developer, I don't know if that fact alone allows that individual to create great things. In addition, there will be a great crowding out effect. If websites and apps are so easy to create now, there will be a deluge of junk to come. Every mediocre idea will be put forth.
- tmountain 3y ago
  This is already the case. See the Apple App Store as an example.
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  > In addition, there will be a great crowding out effect. If websites and apps are so easy to create now, there will be a deluge of junk to come. Every mediocre idea will be put forth. Perhaps it will be the opposite. There's a lot of domain experts out there that might be able to turn their idea into reality.
dclowd9901 3y ago
I’m genuinely excited about integrating AI into our IDEs and metrics gathering and pipelines because I think it’ll pay off dividends in tracking down bugs and preventing shipping regressions. But I am having existential dread over my pay decreasing by a large margin over the next decade. Not sure what I’ll do next. Maybe general contracting.
Imnimo 3y ago
>Unless you work for OpenAI, your GPT leverage is likely wasted on trivial business code But trivial code is the only level of code GPT can really write.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  I think the point is that the individual doesn’t reap the full reward of trivial code written for an employer. Instead, the individual should leverage the new tool to scratch his own itch, build products for his own use or as part of a business which more directly benefits him.
croes 3y ago
How good is GPT-4 in programming something new? This reminds of all these web programming courses that build a todo list or simple insta clone.
davesque 3y ago
Feels like a pretty rosey take. It seems to me that corporations and other monied groups will still have the upper hand. But who knows what's coming really.
croes 3y ago
I wonder if this is really a benefit for learning something. A teacher who tells you the right answers doesn't sound like a good teacher. In hindsight I learned the most from my mistakes and the errors I'm to fix over longer period of time. Sometimes these failures were of use in later projects. I missing all this from GPT. It doesn't really sound like learning more like cheating.
- alimov 3y ago
  I think that depends on how you use the tool. For example asking for answers vs asking probing questions while working something out. So it’s probably up to you as an individual. If you’re missing out on “all this” you might just be asking for answers.
  - croes 3y ago
    If people built pages or software in one day, they seem to ask for answer too. These means they are the less useful part in the development process and can easily be replaced. That's why I don't see the big leverage for individuals in that kind of development. They will be one of millions with exactly the same skill set and lost without GPT. It sounds like those boot camp courses: Build ten projects in ten days to become an genius programmer. Doesn't work, and I think people will overestimate their skill because GPT helped them to do a clone of something that already exists thousandfold.
    - thelastparadise 3y ago
      > It sounds like those boot camp courses: Build ten projects in ten days to become an genius programmer. > Doesn't work, and I think people will overestimate their skill because GPT helped them to do a clone of something that already exists thousandfold. I don't mean to be rude, but was this text generated by GPT? It's breaking my brain.
- esafak 3y ago
  You don't need to understand every problem you encounter. Some things are just an obstacle to be overcome any way possible. Pick your battles.
awinter-py 3y ago
The podfind example in the article is a tailwind page fronting itunes search API. The big question here feels like: how should AI do retrieval? 'Generate an interface to hit existing DB' is probably one of the answers, I suspect this use case will grow. Separate question, should it take a few hundred lines of html + js to provide this? Can low-boilerplate DSLs make humans and LLM codegen better at delivering on these asks
jarenmf 3y ago
LLMs provide nonlinear leverage for experts. So far, I see them increasing the divide between developers or tech-oriented people and end users.
lynx23 3y ago
I feel we have been given a very valuable tool. I think the most sublte aspect for personal use is the freedom from having to ask seemingly stupid questions. It turns out there are a lot of interesting things on this earth. While a good education can prepare you for a lot, nobody knows everything. Asking seemingly stupid questions can be an issue for some. I have tried to cultivate this ability during my lifetime, and have practiced it with people I know are knowledgable in a specific field. But even with that, I catch myself feeling liberated to be able to "privately" ask questions that come to my mind in a more specific way then just firing up a Google search. A search is always more involved. True, I have to be on a different sort of guard when asking an LLM for an explanation for something, but it feels like very useful and time-saving for the quick introduction to something you just happened to think about.
- bguberfain 3y ago
  > freedom from having to ask seemingly stupid questions With almost no risk of receiving a rude answer
greenie_beans 3y ago
how do i use gpt4? i've tried requesting the api with that model and get denied. nor do i see anywhere in the chatgpt ui to upgrade to gpt4.
- mazzystar 3y ago
  Upgrade to Plus in your chatgpt web page and you will see a new model choice.
greenie_beans 3y ago
the average person doesn't know the distinction between chatgpt and gpt4. it's all the same thing to them. keep that in mind anytime you're talking with a non-tech person about this.
nico 3y ago
Small teams are the future AI is the new Linux No single entity can own it or control it This will impact everything in tech
RobinL 3y ago
I would be grateful for an example prompt for the following quote: >>> Copying and pasting documentation and APIs to GPT-4, asking it to write interfaces based on them. Sounds very interesting but I cant quite work out how to phrase the prompt
seu 3y ago
> Within 5 months, I single-handedly launched 5 iOS apps. > Staying in any company right now is a negative return; you are wasting personal leverage. Isn't it obvious that this doesn't work if _everyone_ does it? Also, if the bar we use to measure how useful a tool is for society, is that it allows an individual to release 1 app per month, then we're doomed whether before AIs take over or not.
- thelastparadise 3y ago
  > Isn't it obvious that this doesn't work if _everyone_ does it? Why not? We could have 1000 small businesses instead of one business with 1000 employees.
orangesite 3y ago
I think it's really cool that folk are using this as an opportunity to explore beyond the boundaries of what they think they're capable of.
jonahss 3y ago
LLMs are great for Rubber-ducking!
zackmorris 3y ago
Semi-serious question: how do we help those too old to begin the training? When I went through profound burnout in 2019, the part of my brain that handles planning and execution shut down for about 6 months. I could barely get out of bed, brush my teeth, etc. The grieving process was rough, as well as the struggle to relearn how to function in a culture that doesn't allow breaks. And it was physical, perhaps brought about by sleep apnea and digestive warning signs from stress that I ignored. I survived by separating the planning from the doing, by keeping todo lists and forming habits over weeks that began to rebuild the wounded parts of my psyche so that I could task and adult again. I've since regained my executive function, but the experience changed me. The stuff that used to be automatic became manual, so work takes an even higher toll than it did before, and may even even have all-consuming qualities. I feel, institutionalized, like Brooks in Shawshank Redemption. I know that AI offers a way to automate much of the doing, and within 5-10 years the planning as well. All I have to do is use it. But I'm just so tired physically, mentally and emotionally that the potential benefit feels like a burden. I struggle profoundly to make long-term plans or deal with the logistics around that. I will almost certainly miss this wave of innovation, just like I missed the VR, mobile and gaming bubbles before that. Living my most laborious life instead of my best life. What I'm feeling deep down is that this time is different. AI should not be about personal empowerment. It should be about lifting others who are too infirm after a lifetime of hard work to do it themselves, so that they can rejoin the human race and make the contributions in their hearts that fulfill the promise of their self-actualization. I just don't know where to go with that sentiment, or if my feelings are even relevant anymore.
- dumpsterlid 3y ago
  [dead]
- ilaksh 3y ago
  It _is_ a "dog-eat-dog" world and AI _should_ make it possible to "raise all boats". For that to be possible then we need new paradigms for society. It's very difficult but AI should also help us move in that direction. As far as your particular problems, I hope you find the help you need. It sounds like you may have depression and/or some other psychological issues, but I'm not a doctor. The way I see it is that these types of opportunities in VR or AI have not actually passed by.
dahwolf 3y ago
The part that the author conveniently doesn't go into is income, other than mentioning that people sitting in companies are stuck there because they need the income. Well, this very concept applies to you too, dear solo captain. Nobody is going to pay you any money for your podcast search app that you prompted together in record time. As you get better at this, sure enough you might create something tangible and substantial that otherwise would have taken a small team or take 10 times as long. But guess what? These super powers aren't exclusive. Anybody will be able to do it. So the execution becomes irrelevant and value is based on the idea being unique, and even if that, it will be instantly copied. Even an idea being unique doesn't have to translate in success. We don't exactly have a shortage of software or content, we're already drowning in it and can't even keep up with tools. How would you be even be noticed in an abundance of ideas?
satisfaction 3y ago
Are they comparing CHatGPT 3.5 with GPT4 or ChatGPT4 with GPT4? Because you can now select GPT4 when using CHatgpt.
captainmuon 3y ago
That's really exciting, LLMs make a lot of exploratory work trivial. Unfortunately I feel like I'm hitting a wall here. I've gotten pretty good at learning new things and stamping out prototypes - I still appreciate the help from LLMs a lot. But a big part of my work is people stuff: Follow up with X, make sure Y does Z, find a consensus, and so on. GPT does nothing there, maybe except for helping me formulate a mail. And I'm also not sure it helps with architectural questions. GPT will build you a game, but there are 100s of ways to do it, and it will pick one at random that might be not optimal down the line.
polyphilz 3y ago
> Staying in any company right now is a negative return; you are wasting personal leverage. I left my job at big tech a few months ago and started using ChatGPT (and now GPT 4) shortly after for personal projects. 100% stand by the author's statement. The ability to iterate and execute on my ideas in a way I've never been able to do before—combined with not having to worry about whether I'm infringing on my previous employer's intellectual property rights clause—feels so incredibly freeing.
namaria 3y ago
Sure, more people writing and running more code that they understand less will work out just fine.

547 points by mazzystar 3y ago

I started using GPT-4 for writing ESLint rules whenever I do a code review and I feel it can be an ESLint rule. Simply give it the instance of "bad" and "good" code and let GPT-4 write both the ESLint rule and the unit tests for you. Initially I did a little touch up on the code before submitting. Like using `array.at(-1)` instead of `array[array.length - 1]` but now I do that with GPT-4 too. I say "try using the latest JS features like Array.prototype.at" and it finds other nice things to do too!

andai 3y ago

> I even think that joining any team is a kind of slowdown. Only by sailing alone in a small boat can one maintain agility. I'm reminded of this proverb: If you need to go fast, go alone. If you need to go far, to together.

mazzystar 3y ago
I think it depends on whether you want to go wider or go deeper
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Deep-diving submersibles can only hold a small number of crew. They often require a lot of support personnel, though. Same with going deep on a research/development effort.
moffkalast 3y ago
> If you need to go far, have an AI carry you. Modernizing that proverb.
- eloisant 3y ago
  This has been true for any new tool, you can do more alone using those tools. And you can now do alone things that could only be done with a small team of people. But still, using those tools you can achieve more with a team than alone.

RivieraKid 3y ago

The post says there's a huge difference between GPT-4 and ChatGPT? But which version of ChatGPT?

mazzystar 3y ago
ChatGPT March Version, I think.
- cosgrove 3y ago
  But if you're a paid subscriber you can access GPT4 through ChatGPT's interface. Are you saying there's a difference between using the GPT4 model alone vs. the GPT4 model in the ChatGPT interface? If so, could you please clarify with an example?
  - mazzystar 3y ago
    That's right. I just went to look and it looks like ChatGPT has been updated to the May version. But in terms of previous experience: ChatGPT's code is almost unusable, it always ignores the most basic logic, and I only use it to write short scripts. But GPT-4, even if it contains multiple files referencing each other, it gives code that I don't even need to do Code review.
    - arielweisberg 3y ago
      I have had the opposite experience. Many domains where it can’t produce correct code (counting BitSet, WatchOS apps), or doesn’t even begin to understand (distributed consensus). When it works it is great. When it doesn’t gap can be large. When you ask it to correct itself it will make new mistakes and keep alternating between different mistakes and omissions. I haven’t tried it yet on a real codebase like say a database. Is it even possible to give it that context?
  - simonw 3y ago
    My understanding is that the author was talking about using GPT-4 via the ChatGPT interface. That's where the 25 messages every 3 hours limit comes from. When they compare it to regular ChatGPT they are comparing GPT-4 to GPT-3.5 turbo.

geek_at 3y ago

Learning something with GTP-4 is so much more fun than using google/Stack Overflow. It's like having a tutor that knows your code and gives you hints and solutions based on your actual project. It's a real game changer for learning

smeagull 3y ago
Yeah, but how do you get access to 4?
- jstx1 3y ago
  You need to pay for ChatGPT Plus, or sign up for their API (there’s a waitlist).
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    FWIW, I got API access quite quickly. Applied March 20, got access March 27. My application was only some 2 line bullshit, their example for "why do you want access" rewritten.
    - chpatrick 3y ago
      I applied March 16 and I'm still waiting.
      - Semaphor 3y ago
        Huh, that’s weird. I thought it was simply generally quick. Did you already have a paid account?
      - Veen 3y ago
        I got API access to GPT-4 almost immediately too, but I know people who have been waiting weeks. On the other hand, I don't have plugin access on ChatGPT yet, even though I applied for that as soon as it came out. There's probably quite a lot of luck involved.

jxf 3y ago

This is an interesting view, but I reached a different conclusion than the author. If GPT-4 (and successors, presumably), are so empowering, then leveraging them as a collective could potentially be even more powerful. We shouldn't underestimate the power of highly enabled teams. As another commenter wrote: "if you want to go fast, go alone; if you need to go far, go together".

bulldog13 3y ago

Anyone have any good examples or tutorials of specifically how to use ChatGPT for greenfield code development ?

andai 3y ago
I asked it to design and implement an entire software system. I just copy-pasted the output and it (almost) worked the first time. (It ran out of context window and started forgetting the design; if I'd started each message with the design and class layout it would have probably worked the first time!) Specifically I asked it for a design, then a main class, then for each of the other class files. (This process could probably be automated.)
padolsey 3y ago
I usually ask it to write me a nextjs app and deploy it to vercel. It gives me a few commands and files to plop in the right directories. E.g. `npx create-next-app foo; cd foo; ...; vercel --prod;`. Often I only make a couple changes then 5 mins later it can be deployed for free on vercel. Eg, it took me a couple mins to create a lil app to enable a user to drag/drop words of your sentence. I asked chatgpt (gpt-4) the following: "Write me a nextjs app (and deploy to vercel) that shows the sentence 'Anyone have any good examples or tutorials of specifically how to use ChatGPT for greenfield code development ?' but each word is draggable and re-arrangeable such that a user can drag any word to anywhere in the sentence. Add a randomize button too." See the result here : ) https://dndexamplehn.vercel.app/ https://dndexamplehn.vercel.app/ It's incredibly empowering to be able to easily spin up little proofs-of-concepts or bootstrapping larger projects. I think all the naysayers have not experienced its power yet.
- julianeon 3y ago
  I've thought it would be cool to see something like this: 1. Go on Twitter and find a famous account (for visibility). Maybe they say something like, "The data shows..." 2. Pop into ChatGPT and create a data viz. 3. Deploy to Vercel. 4. Go back to Twitter, post the link, enhance the convo, naturally gain followers in exchange for providing that value.

usrusr 3y ago

“48 hours of conversation with GPT-4“ Heh, sounds like a novel form of torture. The author probably means 48 hours total over a (much) longer time, and it had all been an enjoyable ride of turbocharged learning and discovery, but that's not how it reads to my eyes.

bronco21016 3y ago
GPT-4 is still limited to 25 queries/3 hours and that is likely why it took longer.
- pugio 3y ago
  Every 3 hours. But also, if you have API access you can use the OpenAI playground to query GPT-4 as much as you want. Sure, you pay a cost (per token), but if you're willing to front the bill you can move pretty quickly.
  - bronco21016 3y ago
    Typo on phone, fixed it. Thanks!
  - akiselev 3y ago
    The API rate limit is 40k tokens per minute (I’ve hit it with a personal project).
    - ukuina 3y ago
      That's high enough for most users, I reckon.
      - zoogeny 3y ago
        40k tokens per minute is enough for most users is the next "640K ought to be enough for anybody"
        3y ago

mrbgty 3y ago

>If you are an individual developer, the leverage it provides might be 10 times greater, but when you work for a company, that number might be only 2 These numbers are arbitrary and if you're looking for leverage, a company with a lot of customers is a good way to find it.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

This post reminded me that I’m still somewhat surprised ChatGPT-like systems did not arise out of China first due to their massive investment funds for AI and their base of stem talent. Once they catch-up their censors will have a super power and people will have their writings censored before they hit submit. Will be an interesting decade.

FooBarWidget 3y ago
This is already possible using simple Bayesian filters.
prepend 3y ago
> somewhat surprised ChatGPT-like systems did not arise out of China first due to their massive investment funds for AI and their base of stem talent. Does China innovate in this way? I think software is not a linear function of money in, value out. Inventing new programs and techniques is interesting as I’m sure what the spark is, and it certainly takes money, but that’s not the most important part. I remember reading in Masters of Doom about how John Carmack came up with some of the innovations id software used and was amazed that he, alone, came up with stuff that large, well-funded teams could not. I expect that China could have invested its entire GDP into stem and AI for the past 10 years and would not have came up with LLMs and ChatGPT. Or perhaps they did, but kept it secret and would never release it as a product to the public. But I believe the former based on the few software companies and few software innovations coming out of China in the past 20 years.
shanebellone 3y ago
IMO China is a "long-term country". LLM does not lead to General Intelligence. While the former is profitable (financially and socially), the latter is the holy grail. Time will name the winner.
- chaxor 3y ago
  It heavily depends upon the definition of general intelligence, because we haven't really settled on a definition as of yet. In some circles (of course the ones from Microsoft) the list of requirements is very close to being met by some of the more sophisticated multimodal models (GPT-4 et al). General intelligence is a strange question because it's more about the data/environment than the architecture, (obviously if it were about theoretical capabilities of architecture, AGI was found ages ago). Much of the LLM capabilities have to do with the generality baked into language. Pairing that with the well known proof that GNNs are dynamic programmers, you can get some very nice properties directly from the setup.

dsign 3y ago

I was watching yesterday the 2006 movie "The prestige", with incredibly atmospheric locales that feel so alien. And yet, that world is but one hundred years away. It wasn't until 1934 that the Public Utility Holding Company Act recognized electricity as a utility. Less than one hundred years after that, we have managed to juice out a general digital intellect from humanity's joint efforts. Let's see if we survive the next one hundred years, but boy, way to go!

jfk13 3y ago
> a general digital intellect That's a pretty bold claim.

Karunamon 3y ago

The confusion in terms called out here (and even demonstrated) is probably not to OpenAI's benefit and I am surprised they haven't spent more effort in trying to correct that. ChatGPT is a website that lets you do chat completion [1] against LLM models, and it exposes some extra functions like plug-ins if you are lucky enough to be white listed for them. GPT 3.5 and GPT 4 are the actual models. Someone telling you that they did something cool with ChatGPT probably means GPT 3.5 [1]: https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/chat https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/chat

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> Someone telling you that they did something cool with ChatGPT probably means GPT 3. The confusion is that ChatGPT is using GPT-3.5 by default, but if you pay the $20/month subscription price, you can switch it over to GPT-4 (with query limits). Usually, when someone is telling you they did something really cool with ChatGPT, they're actually using GPT-4. An extra layer of confusion is the API access: GPT-3.5-turbo and GPT-4 models are both optimized to be used in chat, which is somewhat different than earlier text completion models. Because of it, people using GPT-3.5 or GPT-4 via API access (possibly with one of the "alternative ChatGPT frontends"), will often also say they're using "ChatGPT". This is almost, but not completely accurate - the actual ChatGPT contains a bunch of hidden "features" (hidden prompt, extra moderation), that are mostly detrimental to the output/experience you get.
- jmiskovic 3y ago
  Correcting the correction of a correction: The chat interface is no longer using GPT-3.5, since May 3rd. What is the default model called? I have no idea. The release notes page [1] calls it ChatGPT model, the bottom of chat interface calls it "ChatGPT May 3 version". Also people usually call out when they use GPT-4, but in the end you can only assume and be wrong 50% of time. [1] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-notes https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6825453-chatgpt-release-...
  - Karunamon 3y ago

bostonsre 3y ago

Has anyone been able to use it to effectively build more than a green field poc? It's absolutely great for that, but it's been a little clunky when trying to iterate when the context gets too large or when trying to add stuff to am existing system.

lelanthran 3y ago
> Has anyone been able to use it to effectively build more than a green field poc? It's absolutely great for that, but it's been a little clunky when trying to iterate when the context gets too large or when trying to add stuff to am existing system. I'd like to see that too. Just this morning I got it to generate a whole lot of boilerplate. Then it appeared to get dementia: forgot which language the boilerplate was for, when I reminded it it then started creating type aliases for no reason, when I reminded it that the previous snippet (which was the first part of a single long snippet) didn't need those types, it switched languages again. Very difficult once you get a long enough conversation going (something like 5 prompts in and it starts going haywire in random places).
- dumpsterlid 3y ago
  [dead]
andrewljohnson 3y ago
I use AI to help my productivity while coding a lot. I handle the big system, it spits out code for me where i know what i want but don’t know the libraries/syntax.
biql 3y ago
I see limited context and the lack of sandbox dev environment is the main obstacle on way to have more sophisticated usage and faster feedback loop. The value would be greater if it could know everything about the code base, business requirements, related documentation, and, it could even avoid a lot mistakes by simple running type checks and the tests and correct itself before giving the answer.

vemv 3y ago

There's a long gap from: I built a podcast search website to: Staying in any company right now is a negative return. We humans are too easily impressed by tricks, and are too willing to extrapolate them to fantasy land. GPT can certainly accomplish an impressive variety of small tasks. Whether it can build large-scale systems that will power tomorrow's world is uncharted territory. Can you build something meaningful, substantial, robust out of statistical knowledge, without real reasoning behind? If you believe it's possible, where's everyone's array of profitable, newly-founded ventures? Or at least have you automated your job away yet?

nielsole 3y ago
> If you believe it's possible, where's everyone's array of profitable, newly-founded ventures? Or at least have you automated your job away yet? Come on now. GPT 4 is not even out for two months. API access is not yet widely available. Legal questions are preventing many conservative players from adoption. How fast do you think progress propagates?
- throwuwu 3y ago
  The OP better buy some ketchup cause they’ll be eating those words in a few months.
- nr2x 3y ago
  On top of no generally available API, GPT-4 in ChatGPT is really damn slow right now. Unless you have a special deal (Microsoft) the only performant option is 3.5-turbo. In my experience for coding and text summarization it’s totally fine with a limited benefit from GPT-4, which is more impressive at higher order reasoning and planning.
  - mrtranscendence 3y ago
    Interestingly (or not), Perplexity's GPT-4 chatbot is noticeably faster than ChatGPT-4 for me. I don't find its implementation quite as helpful, though, which is weird I think?
- 3y ago

anotherpaulg 3y ago

I have also been using GPT as a force multiplier for my coding, especially in areas where I'm less comfortable like frontend. I put together a tool called `aider` for chatting with GPT-4 about code, having it make changes and keeping track of it all in git. It's feeling like a very nice workflow. @mazzystar you might want to give it a try if you have GPT-4 api access: https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider https://github.com/paul-gauthier/aider

mazzystar 3y ago
Thanks, Will try!

designium 3y ago

I actually feel in the same way of how GPT-4 has increased my capabilities as an individual than for company. It's insane how fast the idea iterations can be and you can actually execute it pretty fast.

collaborative 3y ago

AI tools are absolutely useless once you get past any initial stage in a software development cycle They just can't comprehend what needs to be done even if all that's required are 2 lines of code However, we keep seeing posts from people who don't know html or how to create a chrome extension paternalizing on how we can be much more productive with AI tools. Last I heard a CEO was demanding dev increased productivity or firing some devs because he daw a Youtube video on how easy it is to create a website now

TeMPOraL 3y ago
> AI tools are absolutely useless once you get past any initial stage in a software development cycle Not sure I agree. The initial stage will be the one where most of high-level, broad thinking happens. Once the cycle starts in the earnest, more and more time is spent on the usual software drudge work. I find GPT-4 excels at helping with this kind of coding. I'm reserving judgement on the higher-level / more abstract aspects of software engineering, as I haven't had a chance to try it. My suspicion is that GPT-4 will excel at helping you think through an issue interactively, but may have trouble actually coming up with whole designs on its own, not unless you spend so much effort crafting a context for it ("getting it up to speed" on your problem space) that you'll quickly find better designs in the process. > Last I heard a CEO was demanding dev increased productivity or firing some devs because he daw a Youtube video on how easy it is to create a website now With wix, squarespace and other brands I consciously try to forget about (in proportion to how much advertising spam from them I see, despite using adblockers everywhere I can), plenty of web devs are having a hard time justifying their salaries. At this point, AI tools aren't even competing with them - they're competing with wix, squarespace, et al.! Still, I hope that CEOs replacing workers with ChatGPT are a myth. If not, that's IMO an idiot thing to do. Not because ChatGPT won't manage to do the job - but because the only model in existence, that has capabilities required to effectively replace humans in some jobs, is owned by a single company, has been available for only two-three months so far, and that's in a limited beta. We don't know yet what the limits of GPT-4 are, how to effectively use it, and at any point OpenAI can just take their access away. At this point, it's a great tool to use while it's available, but it's not something you want to hinge your project/business on mid-to-long-term.

collaborative 3y ago

AI tools are absolutely useless once you get past any initial stage in a software development cycle They just can't comprehend what needs to be done even if all that's required are 2 lines of code However, we keep seeing posts from people who don't know html or how to create a chrome extension paternalizing about how we can be much more productive with AI tools. Last I heard a CEO was demanding dev increased productivity or firing some devs because he saw a Youtube video about how easy it is to create a website now The only usefulness I see is in AI replacing SO. Once SO dries we'll have neither

valine 3y ago
This sounds to me like you have no idea how to properly integrate LLMs into your workflow. Just because they’re not useful for changing large code bases doesn’t mean they can’t be valuable. A few examples of things I’ve used LLMs for: Writing bash scripts to automate various parts my workflow Quickly interpreting complex regex Tutoring me on how to use poorly documented APIs Proof reading important emails Everything copilot, writing java docs, auto completing all the cases in a switch statement, etc.
- l33tman 3y ago
  Could you? Do you have to? Would someone pay you to implement an FPGA design, given that you know nothing about it but have access to GPT-4? In practice, I've found that the advantage it might give you quickly ebbs out. It surely helps filling details and blanks though.
- DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
  >Tutoring me on how to use poorly documented APIs Can you elaborate on this? I would find it very useful.
  - valine 3y ago
    My current workflow is to copy a bunch of relevant code into GPT4 and then ask it questions about how to use the API. GPT4 is very good at inferring how to use an API, even from code snippets. The key is that you can paste large amounts of unstructured code and GPT4 will make sense of it.

Ethan_Mick 3y ago

> More importantly, it gives me the courage to dream and attempt things beyond my current abilities. This is one of the small things that GPT has pushed me to do. I'm an experienced programmer and grew up playing video games, but I am not a game developer. I've dabbled over the years but can't build anything outside of a tutorial. The other day, using GPT I went through and made a Pixel Dungeon clone using Phaser (JavaScript game engine). It was such a delight. Together we got the game to a working state before I started to change some of the fundamental design, and then GPT started hallucinating pretty badly. When that happened, I stopped for the night, and then just started new focused conversations to add or change a feature, putting in the relevant code. It's turn-based, with simple AI, enemy monsters, fog of war, line of sight, and a victory/losing condition. Being able to build this in a couple of days is an absolute game-changer, pun intended. I can only imagine the riches of experiences we will have as people are unblocked on skills and can pursue an idea.

appleaday1 3y ago
I like how everyone has been using ChatGPT to code in Javascript, as I have done something as well.
- Ethan_Mick 3y ago
  TypeScript happens to be my current strongest language. I picked Phaser since I wanted to learn the ins and outs of building the game and not need to worry about the language I was writing in. This was also helpful because GPT-4 would still get small things wrong with the TypeScript, but I was able to easily fix those without needing to ask it. If I had tried this in Unity and C# (which I don't know at all), I'd still be figuring out the standard library. I generally recommend learning one new thing at a time when building something new.
- waboremo 3y ago
  ChatGPT benefits from how abundant languages like Javascript and Python are. When you start diving into the lesser used languages, the struggle becomes real. Even worse if there have been substantial breaking changes in the past ~2 years.

zoogeny 3y ago

> Perhaps soon, documentation and APIs will become GPT-friendly first. I can imagine documentation becoming ChatGPT plugin aware. Like, the automatically generated stuff that comes out of Swagger and the like. Maybe a killer feature for a new API documentation startup?

6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
My dream is that we all adopt tools for detecting when docs have become stale. That risk is one of the big reasons for not writing extensive docs in the first place, so the whole dynamic could change.

lyair1 3y ago

I am happy that so many people get to experience the feeling me and other software engineers feel when we write code. OpenAI democratize some of this feeling and now people that never knew how to code can experience the rush of creating something new using code. In a world where a lot of AI Researchers that develop these amazing models are slowed down by their lack of "normal" engineering skills I think it's very apparent that software engineering goes well beyond writing a snippet of code. Like the internet, stackoverflow, forums and other advances in technology that opened new doors and opportunity and democratized the industry - this is another one, a big one! the smart ones will use this push as an entry point to the software development world rather than looking for an oracle function for software development (which does not exist yet)

spmurrayzzz 3y ago
> the smart ones will use this push as an entry point to the software development world rather than looking for an oracle function for software development (which does not exist yet) Very much agree. I think mentorship becomes even more important now. I have a friends that's switching careers and starting to learn software engineering. Just for fun, I back-seated him while he tried to build a really simple app using GPT-4. Even with really fine-tuned prompts, some of which I helped with, the code that was generated was either barely readable, had performance issues, and/or in some cases was just completely broken. At the time, I made the quip that for junior/entry-level folks it's like getting cybernetic implants in your legs before you know how to walk or run.
the_doctah 3y ago
People who use ChatGPT to spit out code as a method of learning software engineering are going to be seriously deficient in fundamentals like performance. I've already worked with way too many engineers who copy/paste code without understanding what it does.
- stasmo 3y ago
  The good news is that those copy/pasters are probably going to be copy/pasting higher quality code if they’re using GPT4.

zackproser 3y ago

What all are you using as your primary interface for ChatGPT et al LLMs? I've had some success with OpenAI's default UI but mostly I've been trying out various community Neovim plugins. I feel strongly that I want an in-IDE pair-programming assistant, but so far I've had at least one or more blocking issues with many of the currently available open source options. NeoAI is great - for example - I've had it working well on multiple machines before - but today after a Neovim / Astronvim update I'm getting errors about my quotas (which are fine) back from the plugin - and I don't really have time to debug that because I need to get some work done :/

gejose 3y ago
I've been really liking Raycast on my mac with the ChatGPT plugin - https://www.raycast.com/ https://www.raycast.com/ - https://www.raycast.com/abielzulio/chatgpt https://www.raycast.com/abielzulio/chatgpt I have it set up to open on CMD + Space
tornato7 3y ago
I have heard good things about the Genie AI VS Code plugin. (I personally decided against installing it because it's closed source)

gfodor 3y ago

GPT-4 got me through porting a near SoTA image segmenter to the browser and building a prototype UX that uses the webcam to grab decals from the real world in a few hours that prob would have taken me at least 5x longer.

senko 3y ago

> Current documentation is written for human reading, with a mix of text and code blocks that makes copying a poor experience. Perhaps soon, documentation and APIs will become GPT-friendly first. Yes. I have recently annotated my Pydantic models and fields with the explicit intention to use the resulting JSONSchema to inform GPT how to structure some information (in effect, writing a one-off client for an internal API I'm creating). As a happy side effect, this is now better document (information about semantics of the data structure elements is closer to the definition of the structure itself, not in some external Markdown text file or in some walled-off wiki).

croes 3y ago
I thought the point of GPT is to be human like and not that humans adapt to GPT.
- esafak 3y ago
  Humans are limited in their language too, so that's still human :) It's just that you're surrounded by humans who speak your language.
- lgas 3y ago
  It's a tool. Humans that adapt to any tool they use frequently.

DonsDiscountGas 3y ago

ChatGPT has been useful to me for learning/looking-up a lot of things, although it sometimes drives me crazy. Often I'll want to use libraries which are rapidly developing, and the training data ending at 2021 kills the accuracy. A webcrawler + chatGPT would be incredibly useful. So far I've only found tools designed for the web admin (finetune on your support docs + make a chatbot for users) rather than something designed for the end user.

Workaccount2 3y ago
I have had success just pasting the relevant documentation for using the library into the chat and telling chatGPT to reference that.
- DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
  I'm talking about stuff like Bevy where the docs are scattered across multiple web pages. ChatGPT can still be helpful but typically copying/pasting a whole doc, asking a question, reading the answer, is slower than just reading the page myself. And if it's the wrong page, then chatGPT won't help.
rerx 3y ago
Have you tried https://www.phind.com https://www.phind.com ?
iamjackg 3y ago
Take a look at https://phind.com https://phind.com Being able to search the web allows it to deal with recent information: you can ask it to limit its search to the API documentation for the library you're working with.
- DonsDiscountGas 3y ago
  Oh this is pretty good, thanks! I do have some non-developer use-cases which this may not work for, but definitely helpful.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

cyrialize 3y ago

I've used ChatGPT for personal project planning. I like to use Trello for personal organization. I just prompt ChatGPT with things I'd like to work on. For example, I've given a prompt akin to: "Can you create for me a plan for organizing my email? It should be a list of tasks to be completed in 15-30 minutes. It should follow the S.M.A.R.T. format." Then I gave it prompts to split all the tasks into single line sentences with a new line in between. You can copy paste this into a card and Trello will ask if you'd like to split it up into multiple cards!

renjimen 3y ago

> Staying in any company right now is a negative return; you are wasting personal leverage. I think it's a bit sad that the only benefit someone can see in their workplace is their salary. Also, I get the feeling this person has never done anything outside of consumer app development with minimal stakeholder interaction. Overall I think it's great we can supercharge our learning and coding capabilities, but it would be naive to think knowledge and coding can let you do anything you want.

JohnFen 3y ago
> I think it's a bit sad that the only benefit someone can see in their workplace is their salary. It's not the only benefit, but it's the only one that you can't get in some other way. I suspect that very few people -- even people who love their jobs -- would continue working in them if they weren't getting paid.
- renjimen 3y ago
  Well yeah, but we're unlikely to ever live in a world where there aren't paid jobs. Personally, I enjoy working with people. I may not make as much money as going solo but holistically my work life is improved by having colleagues. I think the same is true for most people. No person is an island.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > I think the same is true for most people. Sure, the same is true for me. But that's also a need that can be filled without working for someone.
    - theonething 3y ago
      Hard agree on this. I think what we're talking about here is having a sense of community or at least human to human interaction. I can think of so many ways to get that without the obligations that come from having a job. I generally enjoy my job but that is far from the main reason I do it. If money was not an issue, there are so many other things in life I would enjoy doing far more not to mention enjoying the general freedom that comes from not needing to work.

justsocrateasin 3y ago

I really liked this article overall, but was very confused by this section - > If you are an individual developer, the leverage it provides might be 10 times greater, but when you work for a company, that number might be only 2. Where do these numbers come from? Did ChatGPT hallucinate them? I don't understand why both can't be true. Why can't I have 10x leverage in my job and use that productive to unlock more time and then further leverage myself as a personal developer? Very strange sentiment here and also a baseless claim IMO.

gmt2027 3y ago

There's a lot of focus on AI taking away jobs. I believe it will constitute an existential threat to a lot of companies. Highly productive solo individuals and very small teams will outcompete large companies by leveraging AI. When capital requirements, transaction and information costs drop dramatically, the optimal size of a firm will change. I believe they will become dramatically smaller.

bjornsing 3y ago
> When capital requirements, transaction and information costs drop dramatically, the optimal size of a firm will change. I believe they will become dramatically smaller. I hope so. Oh how I hope so.

anonu 3y ago

Corporations serve a purpose - to organize human labor to fulfill a greater task that usually cannot be completed by an individual. So while I don't disagree that GPT-4 in the hands of a layperson programmer may suddenly turn them into a 10x developer, I don't know if that fact alone allows that individual to create great things. In addition, there will be a great crowding out effect. If websites and apps are so easy to create now, there will be a deluge of junk to come. Every mediocre idea will be put forth.

tmountain 3y ago
This is already the case. See the Apple App Store as an example.
thelastparadise 3y ago
> In addition, there will be a great crowding out effect. If websites and apps are so easy to create now, there will be a deluge of junk to come. Every mediocre idea will be put forth. Perhaps it will be the opposite. There's a lot of domain experts out there that might be able to turn their idea into reality.

dclowd9901 3y ago

I’m genuinely excited about integrating AI into our IDEs and metrics gathering and pipelines because I think it’ll pay off dividends in tracking down bugs and preventing shipping regressions. But I am having existential dread over my pay decreasing by a large margin over the next decade. Not sure what I’ll do next. Maybe general contracting.

Imnimo 3y ago

>Unless you work for OpenAI, your GPT leverage is likely wasted on trivial business code But trivial code is the only level of code GPT can really write.

gnicholas 3y ago
I think the point is that the individual doesn’t reap the full reward of trivial code written for an employer. Instead, the individual should leverage the new tool to scratch his own itch, build products for his own use or as part of a business which more directly benefits him.

croes 3y ago

How good is GPT-4 in programming something new? This reminds of all these web programming courses that build a todo list or simple insta clone.

davesque 3y ago

Feels like a pretty rosey take. It seems to me that corporations and other monied groups will still have the upper hand. But who knows what's coming really.

croes 3y ago

I wonder if this is really a benefit for learning something. A teacher who tells you the right answers doesn't sound like a good teacher. In hindsight I learned the most from my mistakes and the errors I'm to fix over longer period of time. Sometimes these failures were of use in later projects. I missing all this from GPT. It doesn't really sound like learning more like cheating.

alimov 3y ago
I think that depends on how you use the tool. For example asking for answers vs asking probing questions while working something out. So it’s probably up to you as an individual. If you’re missing out on “all this” you might just be asking for answers.
- croes 3y ago
  If people built pages or software in one day, they seem to ask for answer too. These means they are the less useful part in the development process and can easily be replaced. That's why I don't see the big leverage for individuals in that kind of development. They will be one of millions with exactly the same skill set and lost without GPT. It sounds like those boot camp courses: Build ten projects in ten days to become an genius programmer. Doesn't work, and I think people will overestimate their skill because GPT helped them to do a clone of something that already exists thousandfold.
  - thelastparadise 3y ago
    > It sounds like those boot camp courses: Build ten projects in ten days to become an genius programmer. > Doesn't work, and I think people will overestimate their skill because GPT helped them to do a clone of something that already exists thousandfold. I don't mean to be rude, but was this text generated by GPT? It's breaking my brain.
esafak 3y ago
You don't need to understand every problem you encounter. Some things are just an obstacle to be overcome any way possible. Pick your battles.

awinter-py 3y ago

The podfind example in the article is a tailwind page fronting itunes search API. The big question here feels like: how should AI do retrieval? 'Generate an interface to hit existing DB' is probably one of the answers, I suspect this use case will grow. Separate question, should it take a few hundred lines of html + js to provide this? Can low-boilerplate DSLs make humans and LLM codegen better at delivering on these asks

jarenmf 3y ago

LLMs provide nonlinear leverage for experts. So far, I see them increasing the divide between developers or tech-oriented people and end users.

lynx23 3y ago

I feel we have been given a very valuable tool. I think the most sublte aspect for personal use is the freedom from having to ask seemingly stupid questions. It turns out there are a lot of interesting things on this earth. While a good education can prepare you for a lot, nobody knows everything. Asking seemingly stupid questions can be an issue for some. I have tried to cultivate this ability during my lifetime, and have practiced it with people I know are knowledgable in a specific field. But even with that, I catch myself feeling liberated to be able to "privately" ask questions that come to my mind in a more specific way then just firing up a Google search. A search is always more involved. True, I have to be on a different sort of guard when asking an LLM for an explanation for something, but it feels like very useful and time-saving for the quick introduction to something you just happened to think about.

bguberfain 3y ago
> freedom from having to ask seemingly stupid questions With almost no risk of receiving a rude answer

greenie_beans 3y ago

how do i use gpt4? i've tried requesting the api with that model and get denied. nor do i see anywhere in the chatgpt ui to upgrade to gpt4.

mazzystar 3y ago
Upgrade to Plus in your chatgpt web page and you will see a new model choice.

greenie_beans 3y ago

the average person doesn't know the distinction between chatgpt and gpt4. it's all the same thing to them. keep that in mind anytime you're talking with a non-tech person about this.

nico 3y ago

Small teams are the future AI is the new Linux No single entity can own it or control it This will impact everything in tech

RobinL 3y ago

I would be grateful for an example prompt for the following quote: >>> Copying and pasting documentation and APIs to GPT-4, asking it to write interfaces based on them. Sounds very interesting but I cant quite work out how to phrase the prompt

seu 3y ago

> Within 5 months, I single-handedly launched 5 iOS apps. > Staying in any company right now is a negative return; you are wasting personal leverage. Isn't it obvious that this doesn't work if _everyone_ does it? Also, if the bar we use to measure how useful a tool is for society, is that it allows an individual to release 1 app per month, then we're doomed whether before AIs take over or not.

thelastparadise 3y ago
> Isn't it obvious that this doesn't work if _everyone_ does it? Why not? We could have 1000 small businesses instead of one business with 1000 employees.

orangesite 3y ago

I think it's really cool that folk are using this as an opportunity to explore beyond the boundaries of what they think they're capable of.

jonahss 3y ago

LLMs are great for Rubber-ducking!

zackmorris 3y ago

Semi-serious question: how do we help those too old to begin the training? When I went through profound burnout in 2019, the part of my brain that handles planning and execution shut down for about 6 months. I could barely get out of bed, brush my teeth, etc. The grieving process was rough, as well as the struggle to relearn how to function in a culture that doesn't allow breaks. And it was physical, perhaps brought about by sleep apnea and digestive warning signs from stress that I ignored. I survived by separating the planning from the doing, by keeping todo lists and forming habits over weeks that began to rebuild the wounded parts of my psyche so that I could task and adult again. I've since regained my executive function, but the experience changed me. The stuff that used to be automatic became manual, so work takes an even higher toll than it did before, and may even even have all-consuming qualities. I feel, institutionalized, like Brooks in Shawshank Redemption. I know that AI offers a way to automate much of the doing, and within 5-10 years the planning as well. All I have to do is use it. But I'm just so tired physically, mentally and emotionally that the potential benefit feels like a burden. I struggle profoundly to make long-term plans or deal with the logistics around that. I will almost certainly miss this wave of innovation, just like I missed the VR, mobile and gaming bubbles before that. Living my most laborious life instead of my best life. What I'm feeling deep down is that this time is different. AI should not be about personal empowerment. It should be about lifting others who are too infirm after a lifetime of hard work to do it themselves, so that they can rejoin the human race and make the contributions in their hearts that fulfill the promise of their self-actualization. I just don't know where to go with that sentiment, or if my feelings are even relevant anymore.

dumpsterlid 3y ago
[dead]
ilaksh 3y ago
It _is_ a "dog-eat-dog" world and AI _should_ make it possible to "raise all boats". For that to be possible then we need new paradigms for society. It's very difficult but AI should also help us move in that direction. As far as your particular problems, I hope you find the help you need. It sounds like you may have depression and/or some other psychological issues, but I'm not a doctor. The way I see it is that these types of opportunities in VR or AI have not actually passed by.

dahwolf 3y ago

The part that the author conveniently doesn't go into is income, other than mentioning that people sitting in companies are stuck there because they need the income. Well, this very concept applies to you too, dear solo captain. Nobody is going to pay you any money for your podcast search app that you prompted together in record time. As you get better at this, sure enough you might create something tangible and substantial that otherwise would have taken a small team or take 10 times as long. But guess what? These super powers aren't exclusive. Anybody will be able to do it. So the execution becomes irrelevant and value is based on the idea being unique, and even if that, it will be instantly copied. Even an idea being unique doesn't have to translate in success. We don't exactly have a shortage of software or content, we're already drowning in it and can't even keep up with tools. How would you be even be noticed in an abundance of ideas?

satisfaction 3y ago

Are they comparing CHatGPT 3.5 with GPT4 or ChatGPT4 with GPT4? Because you can now select GPT4 when using CHatgpt.

captainmuon 3y ago

That's really exciting, LLMs make a lot of exploratory work trivial. Unfortunately I feel like I'm hitting a wall here. I've gotten pretty good at learning new things and stamping out prototypes - I still appreciate the help from LLMs a lot. But a big part of my work is people stuff: Follow up with X, make sure Y does Z, find a consensus, and so on. GPT does nothing there, maybe except for helping me formulate a mail. And I'm also not sure it helps with architectural questions. GPT will build you a game, but there are 100s of ways to do it, and it will pick one at random that might be not optimal down the line.

polyphilz 3y ago

> Staying in any company right now is a negative return; you are wasting personal leverage. I left my job at big tech a few months ago and started using ChatGPT (and now GPT 4) shortly after for personal projects. 100% stand by the author's statement. The ability to iterate and execute on my ideas in a way I've never been able to do before—combined with not having to worry about whether I'm infringing on my previous employer's intellectual property rights clause—feels so incredibly freeing.

namaria 3y ago

Sure, more people writing and running more code that they understand less will work out just fine.