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"Correctness" in what sense? It sounds like it's being expanded to an abstract academic definition here. For practical purposes, correct means whatever the pers

"Correctness" in what sense? It sounds like it's being expanded to an abstract academic definition here. For practical purposes, correct means whatever the person using it deems to be correct. > It can't do that. "My requirements" wasn't part of the training set. Neither are mine, the art of building these models is that they are generalisable enough that they can tackle tasks that aren't in their dataset. They have proven, at least for some classes of tasks, they can do exactly that.

godelski 1y ago
> to an abstract academic definition here Besides the fact that your statement is self contradicting, there is actually a solid definition [0]. You should click the link on specification too. Or better yet, go talk to one of those guys that did their PhD in programming languages. > They have proven Have they? Or did you just assume? Yeah, I know they got good scores on those benchmarks but did you look at the benchmarks? Look at the question and look what is required to pass it. Then take a moment and think. For the love of God, take a moment and think about how you can pass those tests. Don't just take a pass at face value and move on. If you do, well I got a bridge to sell you. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correctness_(computer_science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correctness_(computer_science)
- mindwok 1y ago
  Sure, > In theoretical computer science, an algorithm is correct with respect to a specification if it behaves as specified. "As specified" here being the key phrase. This is defined however you want, and ranges from a person saying "yep, behaves as specified", to a formal proof. Modern language language models are trained under RL for both sides of this spectrum, from "Hey man looks good", to formal theorem proving. See https://arxiv.org/html/2502.08908v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2502.08908v1. So I'll return to my original point: LLMs are not just generating outputs that look plausible, they are generating outputs that satisfy (or at least attempt to satisfy) lots of different objectives across a wide range of requirements. They are explicitly trained to do this. So while you argue over the semantics of "correctness", the rest of us will be building stuff with LLMs that is actually useful and fun.
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
    > they are generating outputs that satisfy (or at least attempt to satisfy) lots of different objectives across a wide range of requirements No they aren't. You were lied to by the hype machine industry. Sorry. The good news is that there's a lot of formerly intractable problems that can now be solved by generating plausible output. Programming is just not one of them.
    - mindwok 1y ago
      > No they aren't. You were lied to by the hype machine industry. Sorry. Ok. My own empirical evidence is in favour of these things being useful, and useful enough to sell their output (partly), but I'll keep in mind that I'm being lied to.
      - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
        Quite a huge leap from "these things are useful" to "these things can code". (And yes, this leap is the lie you're being sold. "LLMs are kinda useful" is not what led to the LLM trillion dollar hype bubble.)
        mindwok 1y ago
        The thing I'm using them for is coding though...
  - godelski 1y ago
    You have to actually read more than the first line of a Wikipedia article to understand it > formal theorem proving You're using Coq and Lean? I'm actually not convinced you read the paper. It doesn't have anything to do with your argument. Someone using LLMs with formal verification systems is wildly different than LLMs being formal verification systems. This really can't work if you don't read your own sources

godelski 1y ago

> to an abstract academic definition here Besides the fact that your statement is self contradicting, there is actually a solid definition [0]. You should click the link on specification too. Or better yet, go talk to one of those guys that did their PhD in programming languages. > They have proven Have they? Or did you just assume? Yeah, I know they got good scores on those benchmarks but did you look at the benchmarks? Look at the question and look what is required to pass it. Then take a moment and think. For the love of God, take a moment and think about how you can pass those tests. Don't just take a pass at face value and move on. If you do, well I got a bridge to sell you. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correctness_(computer_science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correctness_(computer_science)

mindwok 1y ago
Sure, > In theoretical computer science, an algorithm is correct with respect to a specification if it behaves as specified. "As specified" here being the key phrase. This is defined however you want, and ranges from a person saying "yep, behaves as specified", to a formal proof. Modern language language models are trained under RL for both sides of this spectrum, from "Hey man looks good", to formal theorem proving. See https://arxiv.org/html/2502.08908v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2502.08908v1. So I'll return to my original point: LLMs are not just generating outputs that look plausible, they are generating outputs that satisfy (or at least attempt to satisfy) lots of different objectives across a wide range of requirements. They are explicitly trained to do this. So while you argue over the semantics of "correctness", the rest of us will be building stuff with LLMs that is actually useful and fun.
- otabdeveloper4 1y ago
  > they are generating outputs that satisfy (or at least attempt to satisfy) lots of different objectives across a wide range of requirements No they aren't. You were lied to by the hype machine industry. Sorry. The good news is that there's a lot of formerly intractable problems that can now be solved by generating plausible output. Programming is just not one of them.
  - mindwok 1y ago
    > No they aren't. You were lied to by the hype machine industry. Sorry. Ok. My own empirical evidence is in favour of these things being useful, and useful enough to sell their output (partly), but I'll keep in mind that I'm being lied to.
    - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
      Quite a huge leap from "these things are useful" to "these things can code". (And yes, this leap is the lie you're being sold. "LLMs are kinda useful" is not what led to the LLM trillion dollar hype bubble.)
      - mindwok 1y ago
        The thing I'm using them for is coding though...
- godelski 1y ago
  You have to actually read more than the first line of a Wikipedia article to understand it > formal theorem proving You're using Coq and Lean? I'm actually not convinced you read the paper. It doesn't have anything to do with your argument. Someone using LLMs with formal verification systems is wildly different than LLMs being formal verification systems. This really can't work if you don't read your own sources