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Python, in a research environment. They did not bother restricting what the AI can do, and let it read and modify its own code in plaintext. Not really that sur

Python, in a research environment. They did not bother restricting what the AI can do, and let it read and modify its own code in plaintext. Not really that surprising. Not sure why this kind of "we are aiming for AGI" code is written in Python. I don't get it.

staunton 2y ago
> Not sure why this kind of "we are aiming for AGI" code is written in Python Python is used because it's easy to use for these high-level numeric calculations (compared, e.g., to C) and all the relevant libraries are available in Python. The libraries are available in Python due to network effects, to some degree again relying on Python being easy to use and having been around when that groundwork was laid.
irthomasthomas 2y ago
I guess it's because LLMs score highest on python code. Which I presume is due to to the popularity of python code in the training data. What language would you use?
- lionkor 2y ago
  TFA says that the AI "unexpectedly" modified code. To avoid issues like this, I would probably prefer to use a programming language that makes it harder for programs to modify themselves, such as any compiled language. The further away a language is from natural language the worse LLMs perform. Make an LLM write assembly and you'll see what I mean ;)
  - irthomasthomas 2y ago
    You might be right. I was surprised LLMs where not phased by the white-space programming, which, I vaguely recall, melted my mind a little when first I encountered it. On the other hand, LLMs don't really see the white space. They don't see or speak natural language, either. They only see and speak in tokens. A list of numbers. A tokenizer model then converts those numbers to text. I also assume that assembly would not be strongly represented in the data sets used for training, so that test wouldn't prove much. Interesting to think about, anyway.
GrassTheBikes 2y ago
>Not sure why this kind of "we are aiming for AGI" code is written in Python So that it's slow enough that a human can intervene if necessary?

staunton 2y ago

> Not sure why this kind of "we are aiming for AGI" code is written in Python Python is used because it's easy to use for these high-level numeric calculations (compared, e.g., to C) and all the relevant libraries are available in Python. The libraries are available in Python due to network effects, to some degree again relying on Python being easy to use and having been around when that groundwork was laid.

irthomasthomas 2y ago

I guess it's because LLMs score highest on python code. Which I presume is due to to the popularity of python code in the training data. What language would you use?

lionkor 2y ago
TFA says that the AI "unexpectedly" modified code. To avoid issues like this, I would probably prefer to use a programming language that makes it harder for programs to modify themselves, such as any compiled language. The further away a language is from natural language the worse LLMs perform. Make an LLM write assembly and you'll see what I mean ;)
- irthomasthomas 2y ago
  You might be right. I was surprised LLMs where not phased by the white-space programming, which, I vaguely recall, melted my mind a little when first I encountered it. On the other hand, LLMs don't really see the white space. They don't see or speak natural language, either. They only see and speak in tokens. A list of numbers. A tokenizer model then converts those numbers to text. I also assume that assembly would not be strongly represented in the data sets used for training, so that test wouldn't prove much. Interesting to think about, anyway.

GrassTheBikes 2y ago

>Not sure why this kind of "we are aiming for AGI" code is written in Python So that it's slow enough that a human can intervene if necessary?