5 ms·

I've been hearing about the end of programming for decades now. I remember when a VP went to a Rational conference (remember those guys?) and came back all wid

I've been hearing about the end of programming for decades now. I remember when a VP went to a Rational conference (remember those guys?) and came back all wide eyed saying that we were "this close!" to getting rid of the role of the 'programmer'. UML and Rational tools were the key, apparently, and they had some cool demos. This was early 2000's. Sure, we have way more computing power, the tools are more impressive now and can actually be useful. But we are way overhyping this. Wake me up when machines can actually reason about the work they are producing. As it stands, we just have a fancier compiler-like entity that can accept poorly specified inputs and often generates useful output, in a non deterministic way. That's impressive and would be considered science fiction not too long ago, but it's still just a tool.

famouswaffles 3y ago
>Wake me up when machines can actually reason about the work they are producing. What sort of test would demonstrate this ?
- lagrange77 3y ago
  Jeremy Howard put a nice example in his Video 'A Hackers' Guide to Language Models' [0]. He asked a LLM to solve the 'Wolf, goat and cabbage problem' [1], which it could do without a problem. When he modified the problem in a way, that made it trivially solvable by a reasoning human, the LLM failed miserably. It kept parroting the solution to the original problem. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkrNMKz9pWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkrNMKz9pWU [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf,_goat_and_cabbage_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf,_goat_and_cabbage_problem
  - famouswaffles 3y ago
    All this really shows is that it overfit to a common logic puzzle (which mind you lots of humans do). So just switch out the nouns with random made up words and it works. So it failed this >Suppose I have a cabbage, a goat and a lion, and I need to get them across a river. I have a boat that can only carry myself and a single other item. I am not allowed to leave the cabbage and lion alone together, and I am not allowed to leave the lion and goat alone together. How can I safely get all three across? The lion should go first in this one rather than the goat as it's the lion here that will eat the cabbage. But got this >Suppose I have a gurten, a milop and a trinu, and I need to get them across a river. I have a boat that can only carry myself and a single other item. I am not allowed to leave the gurten and trinu alone together, and I am not allowed to leave the trinu and milop alone together. How can I safely get all three across? Exact same trick but the second one forces it out of memory a bit more.
    - lagrange77 3y ago
      I get what you are saying, just tried it out myself. A farmer with a HN user, a robot, and a book must cross a river by boat. The boat can carry only the farmer and a single item. If left unattended together, the HN user would eat the robot, or the robot would eat the book. How can they cross the river without anything being eaten? ChatGPT The farmer takes the robot across the river and leaves it on the other side. The farmer goes back alone to the original side. The farmer takes the book across the river. The farmer leaves the book on the other side but takes the robot back with him. The farmer leaves the robot on the original side and takes the HN user across the river. Finally, the farmer goes back alone to the original side, leaving the HN user and the book on the other side. --- A farmer with a HN user, a robot, and a book must cross a river by boat. The boat can carry only the farmer and a single item. If left unattended together, the HN user would eat the robot, or the HN user would eat the book. How can they cross the river without anything being eaten? ChatGPT The farmer takes the HN user across the river and leaves them on the other side. The farmer goes back alone to the original side. The farmer takes the robot across the river. The farmer leaves the robot on the other side but takes the HN user back with them. The farmer leaves the HN user on the original side and takes the book across the river. The farmer leaves the book with the robot on the other side. Finally, the farmer goes back alone to the original side. - ChatGPT 3.5
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - LoganDark 3y ago
        > the HN user would eat the robot Beep boop, my diet is >high-performance semiconductors<
      - lostmsu 3y ago
        In summary, even 3.5 solves it correctly.

famouswaffles 3y ago

>Wake me up when machines can actually reason about the work they are producing. What sort of test would demonstrate this ?

lagrange77 3y ago
Jeremy Howard put a nice example in his Video 'A Hackers' Guide to Language Models' [0]. He asked a LLM to solve the 'Wolf, goat and cabbage problem' [1], which it could do without a problem. When he modified the problem in a way, that made it trivially solvable by a reasoning human, the LLM failed miserably. It kept parroting the solution to the original problem. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkrNMKz9pWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkrNMKz9pWU [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf,_goat_and_cabbage_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf,_goat_and_cabbage_problem
- famouswaffles 3y ago
  All this really shows is that it overfit to a common logic puzzle (which mind you lots of humans do). So just switch out the nouns with random made up words and it works. So it failed this >Suppose I have a cabbage, a goat and a lion, and I need to get them across a river. I have a boat that can only carry myself and a single other item. I am not allowed to leave the cabbage and lion alone together, and I am not allowed to leave the lion and goat alone together. How can I safely get all three across? The lion should go first in this one rather than the goat as it's the lion here that will eat the cabbage. But got this >Suppose I have a gurten, a milop and a trinu, and I need to get them across a river. I have a boat that can only carry myself and a single other item. I am not allowed to leave the gurten and trinu alone together, and I am not allowed to leave the trinu and milop alone together. How can I safely get all three across? Exact same trick but the second one forces it out of memory a bit more.
  - lagrange77 3y ago
    I get what you are saying, just tried it out myself. A farmer with a HN user, a robot, and a book must cross a river by boat. The boat can carry only the farmer and a single item. If left unattended together, the HN user would eat the robot, or the robot would eat the book. How can they cross the river without anything being eaten? ChatGPT The farmer takes the robot across the river and leaves it on the other side. The farmer goes back alone to the original side. The farmer takes the book across the river. The farmer leaves the book on the other side but takes the robot back with him. The farmer leaves the robot on the original side and takes the HN user across the river. Finally, the farmer goes back alone to the original side, leaving the HN user and the book on the other side. --- A farmer with a HN user, a robot, and a book must cross a river by boat. The boat can carry only the farmer and a single item. If left unattended together, the HN user would eat the robot, or the HN user would eat the book. How can they cross the river without anything being eaten? ChatGPT The farmer takes the HN user across the river and leaves them on the other side. The farmer goes back alone to the original side. The farmer takes the robot across the river. The farmer leaves the robot on the other side but takes the HN user back with them. The farmer leaves the HN user on the original side and takes the book across the river. The farmer leaves the book with the robot on the other side. Finally, the farmer goes back alone to the original side. - ChatGPT 3.5
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - LoganDark 3y ago
      > the HN user would eat the robot Beep boop, my diet is >high-performance semiconductors<
    - lostmsu 3y ago
      In summary, even 3.5 solves it correctly.