4 ms·

Why the hell does it have to be AI? A regex would be faster to run, test, and diff check. Even better,instead of paying a programmer to waste your time just pay

Why the hell does it have to be AI? A regex would be faster to run, test, and diff check. Even better,instead of paying a programmer to waste your time just pay an actual editor to proof read it

TeMPOraL 3y ago
It doesn't. It perhaps shouldn't. That said, I found myself doing little text mangling tasks with GPT-4 instead of appropriate command line tools, because fuck if I remember the flags to sort and unique, and it's much faster to just describe what I want and have the LLM take a crack at it. This is why, I think, you'll see a lot of simple(ish) tasks being done by LLMs, at couple orders of magnitude more compute cost - it's just that much more convenient. EDIT: nevermind. That was about just doing regex replace. But if you want to do it correctly in an automated way, LLMs are indeed the best tool for the job in the general case, because they understand how language work, in a way that you can't really formalize in code. No, feeding the complete definition of English grammar to the computer won't help, because a) it probably doesn't exist, and b) even if it does, it's merely a suggestion - natural language is a living thing, and is not bound by fixed rulesets.
- lalopalota 3y ago
  Typing out the instructions, copying and pasting the data, then analyzing the output for correctness is faster than running `sort -h` ?
  - TeMPOraL 3y ago
    Faster than recalling or finding out again that it's `sort -h`, and not `sort -n` or `xargs -wtf -- sort -xkcd {}` or whatever.
  - messe 3y ago
    It can be less mental effort, not necessarily faster.
RheingoldRiver 3y ago
But the LLM already "understands" the changes that need to be made. A regex to figure out if "flat" means "apartment" or not? Consider the text (which I just made up & I'm really not a fiction writer so I apologize for it being terrible): "Oh, I live near there too! House or flat?" Stanley hesitated. These questions were getting more and more personal. Was this her idea of casual conversation? Or was she trying to get to know him personally? Well, he thought, what could go wrong if I treat this like a conversation. "Flat," he said. And then asked a question of his own. "What kind of pop do you like?" How are you going to decide if "flat" is talking about non-fizzy pop/soda, or a dwelling space with a regex? It's a lot closer to the word "pop." Of course, GPT handles this perfectly https://chat.openai.com/share/fb6a56a2-749c-4e71-9506-541bb84cc610 https://chat.openai.com/share/fb6a56a2-749c-4e71-9506-541bb8...
- hunter2_ 3y ago
  Some places in America do say "pop" instead of "soda," so I'm hesitant to call it perfect... But I'll admit I agree that this is well beyond the scope of regex.
numpad0 3y ago
Because replacing all appearances of apartment with apartment just apartment out isn’t going to work?

Why the hell does it have to be AI? A regex would be faster to run, test, and diff check. Even better,instead of paying a programmer to waste your time just pay an actual editor to proof read it

TeMPOraL 3y ago

It doesn't. It perhaps shouldn't. That said, I found myself doing little text mangling tasks with GPT-4 instead of appropriate command line tools, because fuck if I remember the flags to sort and unique, and it's much faster to just describe what I want and have the LLM take a crack at it. This is why, I think, you'll see a lot of simple(ish) tasks being done by LLMs, at couple orders of magnitude more compute cost - it's just that much more convenient. EDIT: nevermind. That was about just doing regex replace. But if you want to do it correctly in an automated way, LLMs are indeed the best tool for the job in the general case, because they understand how language work, in a way that you can't really formalize in code. No, feeding the complete definition of English grammar to the computer won't help, because a) it probably doesn't exist, and b) even if it does, it's merely a suggestion - natural language is a living thing, and is not bound by fixed rulesets.

lalopalota 3y ago
Typing out the instructions, copying and pasting the data, then analyzing the output for correctness is faster than running `sort -h` ?
- TeMPOraL 3y ago
  Faster than recalling or finding out again that it's `sort -h`, and not `sort -n` or `xargs -wtf -- sort -xkcd {}` or whatever.
- messe 3y ago
  It can be less mental effort, not necessarily faster.

RheingoldRiver 3y ago

But the LLM already "understands" the changes that need to be made. A regex to figure out if "flat" means "apartment" or not? Consider the text (which I just made up & I'm really not a fiction writer so I apologize for it being terrible): "Oh, I live near there too! House or flat?" Stanley hesitated. These questions were getting more and more personal. Was this her idea of casual conversation? Or was she trying to get to know him personally? Well, he thought, what could go wrong if I treat this like a conversation. "Flat," he said. And then asked a question of his own. "What kind of pop do you like?" How are you going to decide if "flat" is talking about non-fizzy pop/soda, or a dwelling space with a regex? It's a lot closer to the word "pop." Of course, GPT handles this perfectly https://chat.openai.com/share/fb6a56a2-749c-4e71-9506-541bb84cc610 https://chat.openai.com/share/fb6a56a2-749c-4e71-9506-541bb8...

hunter2_ 3y ago
Some places in America do say "pop" instead of "soda," so I'm hesitant to call it perfect... But I'll admit I agree that this is well beyond the scope of regex.

numpad0 3y ago

Because replacing all appearances of apartment with apartment just apartment out isn’t going to work?