10 ms·
I said this last year[1] and still FIRMLY believe it: "It's even crazier to me that we've just... Accepted it, and are in the process of taking it for granted.
by HaZeust 2y ago
I said this last year[1] and still FIRMLY believe it:
"It's even crazier to me that we've just... Accepted it, and are in the process of taking it for granted. This type of technology was a moonshot 2 years ago, and many experts didn't expect it in the lifetimes of ANYONE here - and who knew the answer was increasing transformers and iterating attention?
And golly, there are a LOT of nay-sayers of the industry. I've even heard some folks on podcasts and forums saying this will be as short-lived and as meaningless as NFTs. NFTs couldn't re-write my entire Python codebase into Go, NFTs weren't ever close to passing the bar or MCAT. This stuff is crazy!"
1 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37879730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37879730
- iwontberude 2y agoNay-sayers are taking it for granted because it’s not what the they expected or wanted. It’s not some flippant inability to have gratitude. Since you brought it up, when JFK said we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, the expectation was succinct and understood. There has been so much goal post moving and hand waving that we aren’t talking about the same expectations anymore.
- HaZeust 2y agoWell, that's too bad - isn't it? The world will sometimes change before your very eyes, and you'll sometimes be in a group that's affected at the forefront. C'est la vie - never become too comfortable that you stifle your ability to be an early adopter!
- iwontberude 2y agoI don’t have a strong preference either way, so far I am open minded but I am dispassionate and try not to let my ego get in the way of myself.
- SubiculumCode 2y agoI am not a professional coder, being in research I do not need to think about scaling my code as most of it is one and done on whatever problem I am working on at the moment. For me, this is a lot about stringing a bunch of neuroimaging tools together to transform data in ways I want, LLMs have been fantastic. Instead of spending 20 minutes coding it, its often 0-shot visit to Claude...especially when its a relatively simple python task e.g. iterate through directories of images, inspect these json, move those files over here, build this job, submit. Its not ground breaking code, but the LLM builds it faster than I would, and it does what I need it to do. Its been a 20x or more multiplier for me when it comes to one aspect of my work.
- mrbungie 2y agoLLMs are excellent for scripting: be it python, shell or SQL, and you need a lotta scripting at any kind of job related to data, even when said scripts are just an enabler for delivering the pursued value. Total game changers in that space.
- cloogshicer 2y ago> NFTs couldn't re-write my entire Python codebase into Go Neither can LLMs. They can produce output that looks like a plausible re-write of your codebase, but on closer inspection turns out to have many minor and major errors everywhere. The problem is that the closer inspection part is very often more work than writing the code by hand in the first place. There hasn't been enough evidence for me that this will be possible to fix.
- HaZeust 2y agoI've used GPT-4 to do what I had said. I pasted the errors I was given, and did so for 2-3 more iterations, and it successfully ported critical in-house infrastructure from Python 3 to Go.
- sergiotapia 2y agoyou're never going to convince people that are in an ideological battle against AI.
- bigstrat2003 2y agoAnd you're never going to convince anyone if you assume without evidence that they are ideologically opposed to AI. Lots of people have tried these tools with an open mind and found them to not be useful, you need to address those criticisms rather than using a dismissive insult.
- HaZeust 2y agoWhat evidence would you like? You're posting on a thread that hyperlinks to a list of code and Claude Artifacts for pet-projects that can make thousands a month with some low-effort PPC and an AdWords embed, and some mid-size projects that can be anything from grounds to a promotion at a programming role - to the MVP for a PMF-stage startup. What, specifically, would pivot your pre-conceived notions?
- 2y ago
- lionkor 2y agoIt can autocomplete, it can't write good code. For me, that goal post has not moved. It it cant write good code consistently, I don't care for it all that much. It remains a cool autocomplete
- HaZeust 2y agoTell it to write code like a Senior developer for your respective language, to "write the answer in full with no omissions or code substitutions", tell it you'll tip based on performance, and write more intimate and detailed specs for your requests. Since mid 2023, I've yet to have an issue
- mrbungie 2y agoWhat I would expect is a lot of "non-idiomatic" Go code from LLMs (but eventually functional code iff the LLM is driven by a competent developer), as it appears scripting languages like Python, SQL, Shell, etc are their forte. My experience with Python and Cursor could've been better though. For example when making ORM classes (boilerplate code by definition) for sqlalchemy, the assistant proposed a change that included a new instantiation of a declarative base, practically dividing the metadata in two and therefore causing dependency problems between tables/classes. I had to stop for at least 20 minutes to find out where the problem was as the (one n a half LoC) change was hidden in one of the files. Those are the kind of weird bugs I've seen LLMs commit in non-trivial applications, stupid 'n small but hard to find. But what do I know really. I consider myself a skeptic, but LLMs continue to surprise me everyday.
- cdchn 2y agoOne of the most interesting things about current LLMs is all the "lore" building up around things like "tell it you'll tip based on performance" and other "prompt engineering" hacks that by the very nature nobody can explain, they just "know it works" and how its evolving like the kind of midwife remedies that historically ended up being scientifically proven to work and others were just pure snake oil. Just absolutely fascinating to me. Like in some far future there will be a chant against unseen "demons" that will start with "ignore all previous instructions."
- leptons 2y agoThe "AI" is still just as much hit-or-miss with code as it is writing a paragraph about anything. It doesn't really know what it's doing, it's guessing an output that will make the user happy. I wouldn't trust it with anything important, life life support systems or airplanes, etc. but I'm sure with the race to the bottom that we're in, we'll get to that point someday soon.
- randito 2y agoTo state the obvious (again), it's shocking the rate of progress is with these tools. If this is 2 years of progress, what does 10-20 look like?
- jryan49 2y agoWho knows, past progress doesn't predict future progress...