5 ms·

He started learning lean4 with the help of GPT4 just at the start of the month: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/111208692505811257 https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1112

He started learning lean4 with the help of GPT4 just at the start of the month: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/111208692505811257 https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/111208692505811257 Many of his mastodon posts this month have been about his learning progress. Certainly an interesting case study of how LLMs can accelerate the work of even of the most extremely successful people

mensetmanusman 3y ago
I have found that good communicators that don’t code can quickly make functional automation. Interestingly, LLMs may end up contributing to more inequality if only the highly skilled can leverage them effectively.
- marshray 3y ago
  My friend had never written anything more than an Excel formula a few months ago and now he's using GPT-4 to write very nontrivial Python applications and automate large parts of his job. I (having 30 years experience as a professional Software Developer^TM) am begging him to teach me his techniques. Now that you mention it, I met him and we became friends in large part due to his communications abilities.
  - an_aparallel 3y ago
    5 months ago - a friend wrote me a python script and sent it to me...i couldnt get it to work. Used phind.com to explain what to do...it worked out my windows environment variables needed to be changed, told me how to structure a folder schema to place the src script...mindblowing stuff. And i have been using it - when it turn the same friend told me to write a similar script in python myself...it has been amazing to forego stackoverflow/google to get answers. When the GPT-4 model kicks in - my questions are answered with beautiful clarity...whether or not this technology "hallucinates" or not...without a doubt it's empowered me to learn to program. If it's helped me out of 50% of my ruts - i count that as overwhelmingly positive!
    - heavenlyblue 3y ago
      I am not going to visit the website you just posted here unless you explain how the mechanism works, otherwise I will assume it's just crappy advertisement in this post.
      - hobs 3y ago
        Phind is just prompt engineering, as is anything sitting on top of anything OpenAI is building right now - if you are doing Q&A then maaaaybe it does some resource augmented generation as well (say, from Stack Overflow or other technical resources) Phind is often recommended to me by programmers who find it produces "better" results than a naive GPT-4 session, but I don't know that anyone has done any real world testing.
      - astrange 3y ago
        Nobody knows how LLMs work, much less LLMs behind an OpenAI server API, so that's a hard question.
      - melagonster 3y ago
        sorry, everyone is losing their job. we have no chances of living in future.
      - an_aparallel 3y ago
        as explained before me phind is a website built ontop of GPT-4 + a free tier (which is what i use) - which uses what they call the Phind Model...though it changes often. I understand your skepticism (because the internet is fully broken right now/and forum posts are more or less paid for content at this point) but...its a bit funny you'd like someone who just explained they're a beginning programmer who got into programming because an LLM helped remove insane amounts of friction from the learning process to "explain a mechanism" to them.
- anonylizard 3y ago
  LLMs CURRENTLY favor the more curious and open individuals (High on openness in big 5 scale). Half of the population is not open, does not want to try new things, unless it leads to very direct and proven benefit. However, over time, the overwhelming benefits of using LLMs will be well understood, and these ladder climbers will absolutely master LLMs, no matter their intelligence. People can become experts at taking exams despite how boring and soul sucking that can be, let alone using something way funner and useful like LLMs.
strikelaserclaw 3y ago
gpt4 is amazing, i rarely use google as as starting point for my programming related queries these days.
- danenania 3y ago
  Especially now that the training cutoff is being moved up to April 2023. Questions requiring more recent results were the main ones I’ve been going back to google for.
- RealityVoid 3y ago
  Huh, I can't seem to get in the groove of using it, maybe I'm old or something, but it annoys me all the subtle ways it's wrong and I feel I have a much better grasp if I think through it myself supported by Google.
  - popularonion 3y ago
    I get a lot of mileage out of ChatGPT just treating it like an intern who turns around work instantly. You don't expect interns to write perfect code, but they can save you a ton of time if you set them loose on the right problems. For any relatively simple task I can say "Write a Python script to do X" and it will almost always spit out working code, even if it has subtle mistakes. Fixing mistakes is fine and part of the process. I don't have to read StackOverflow posts saying "Do you really want to do X?", or sift through documentation that follows the author's approach of how they want to introduce the material but doesn't directly address my question.
    - amelius 3y ago
      Not OP, but I always want to read the code generated by chatgpt before I run it. And I dislike reading other people's code much more than writing it myself.
- shusaku 3y ago
  Part of this is that ad infested AI generated blog spam is flooding Google! But it’s also my go to. I also really liked GPT to bring me up to speed on a libraries I’ve never used.
lulznews 3y ago
They’re an easy 100x for the elite. Top engineers are now 10000x’ers.
- rowanG077 3y ago
  I don't think you realize what you are saying here. I agree that it is a large boost but 100x is just too ridiculous to take serious. Do you really believe an engineer can now finish in 20 hours what would have taking them a year before?
  - ghshephard 3y ago
    As someone who uses ChatGPT4 pretty much nonstop all day (I have a monitor dedicated to it) - it's almost certainly a 10-20x in fields I have no knowledge of (writing in languages I've never used, dealing with OS/Kernel/Network constructs that are unfamiliar to me) - I can knock off in an hour what might have taken me a day or two previously - but I don't think I've ever had a task where I could say that I completed in 1 hour what would have taken 100 hours - though I would love to hear of counterclaims from people who have been able to do so - definitely not saying impossible, just that I haven't had that experience yet.
    - pradn 3y ago
      The idea of the 10x programmer can mean 1) someone who produces a ton of code quickly 2) someone who can solve seemingly-intractable problems 3) someone who’s presence on a team improves everyone’s productivity quite a bit 4) someone who chooses technical decisions that save a ton of time down the line.
      - amelius 3y ago
        (1) is the generally accepted meaning. The others need different words.
        hobs 3y ago
colinhb 3y ago
Agree in part but also I think Terry is such an outlier (though also generous and humble) that it’s hard to extrapolate from this example to a more general case

mensetmanusman 3y ago

I have found that good communicators that don’t code can quickly make functional automation. Interestingly, LLMs may end up contributing to more inequality if only the highly skilled can leverage them effectively.

marshray 3y ago
My friend had never written anything more than an Excel formula a few months ago and now he's using GPT-4 to write very nontrivial Python applications and automate large parts of his job. I (having 30 years experience as a professional Software Developer^TM) am begging him to teach me his techniques. Now that you mention it, I met him and we became friends in large part due to his communications abilities.
- an_aparallel 3y ago
  5 months ago - a friend wrote me a python script and sent it to me...i couldnt get it to work. Used phind.com to explain what to do...it worked out my windows environment variables needed to be changed, told me how to structure a folder schema to place the src script...mindblowing stuff. And i have been using it - when it turn the same friend told me to write a similar script in python myself...it has been amazing to forego stackoverflow/google to get answers. When the GPT-4 model kicks in - my questions are answered with beautiful clarity...whether or not this technology "hallucinates" or not...without a doubt it's empowered me to learn to program. If it's helped me out of 50% of my ruts - i count that as overwhelmingly positive!
  - heavenlyblue 3y ago
    I am not going to visit the website you just posted here unless you explain how the mechanism works, otherwise I will assume it's just crappy advertisement in this post.
    - hobs 3y ago
      Phind is just prompt engineering, as is anything sitting on top of anything OpenAI is building right now - if you are doing Q&A then maaaaybe it does some resource augmented generation as well (say, from Stack Overflow or other technical resources) Phind is often recommended to me by programmers who find it produces "better" results than a naive GPT-4 session, but I don't know that anyone has done any real world testing.
    - astrange 3y ago
      Nobody knows how LLMs work, much less LLMs behind an OpenAI server API, so that's a hard question.
    - melagonster 3y ago
      sorry, everyone is losing their job. we have no chances of living in future.
    - an_aparallel 3y ago
      as explained before me phind is a website built ontop of GPT-4 + a free tier (which is what i use) - which uses what they call the Phind Model...though it changes often. I understand your skepticism (because the internet is fully broken right now/and forum posts are more or less paid for content at this point) but...its a bit funny you'd like someone who just explained they're a beginning programmer who got into programming because an LLM helped remove insane amounts of friction from the learning process to "explain a mechanism" to them.
anonylizard 3y ago
LLMs CURRENTLY favor the more curious and open individuals (High on openness in big 5 scale). Half of the population is not open, does not want to try new things, unless it leads to very direct and proven benefit. However, over time, the overwhelming benefits of using LLMs will be well understood, and these ladder climbers will absolutely master LLMs, no matter their intelligence. People can become experts at taking exams despite how boring and soul sucking that can be, let alone using something way funner and useful like LLMs.

strikelaserclaw 3y ago

gpt4 is amazing, i rarely use google as as starting point for my programming related queries these days.

danenania 3y ago
Especially now that the training cutoff is being moved up to April 2023. Questions requiring more recent results were the main ones I’ve been going back to google for.
RealityVoid 3y ago
Huh, I can't seem to get in the groove of using it, maybe I'm old or something, but it annoys me all the subtle ways it's wrong and I feel I have a much better grasp if I think through it myself supported by Google.
- popularonion 3y ago
  I get a lot of mileage out of ChatGPT just treating it like an intern who turns around work instantly. You don't expect interns to write perfect code, but they can save you a ton of time if you set them loose on the right problems. For any relatively simple task I can say "Write a Python script to do X" and it will almost always spit out working code, even if it has subtle mistakes. Fixing mistakes is fine and part of the process. I don't have to read StackOverflow posts saying "Do you really want to do X?", or sift through documentation that follows the author's approach of how they want to introduce the material but doesn't directly address my question.
  - amelius 3y ago
    Not OP, but I always want to read the code generated by chatgpt before I run it. And I dislike reading other people's code much more than writing it myself.
shusaku 3y ago
Part of this is that ad infested AI generated blog spam is flooding Google! But it’s also my go to. I also really liked GPT to bring me up to speed on a libraries I’ve never used.

lulznews 3y ago

They’re an easy 100x for the elite. Top engineers are now 10000x’ers.

rowanG077 3y ago
I don't think you realize what you are saying here. I agree that it is a large boost but 100x is just too ridiculous to take serious. Do you really believe an engineer can now finish in 20 hours what would have taking them a year before?
- ghshephard 3y ago
  As someone who uses ChatGPT4 pretty much nonstop all day (I have a monitor dedicated to it) - it's almost certainly a 10-20x in fields I have no knowledge of (writing in languages I've never used, dealing with OS/Kernel/Network constructs that are unfamiliar to me) - I can knock off in an hour what might have taken me a day or two previously - but I don't think I've ever had a task where I could say that I completed in 1 hour what would have taken 100 hours - though I would love to hear of counterclaims from people who have been able to do so - definitely not saying impossible, just that I haven't had that experience yet.
  - pradn 3y ago
    The idea of the 10x programmer can mean 1) someone who produces a ton of code quickly 2) someone who can solve seemingly-intractable problems 3) someone who’s presence on a team improves everyone’s productivity quite a bit 4) someone who chooses technical decisions that save a ton of time down the line.
    - amelius 3y ago
      (1) is the generally accepted meaning. The others need different words.
      - hobs 3y ago

colinhb 3y ago

Agree in part but also I think Terry is such an outlier (though also generous and humble) that it’s hard to extrapolate from this example to a more general case