4 ms·
>I'd expect it to work like a very junior programmer, but it works like a very drunk senior programmer that isn't listening to you very well at all. This seems
by edm0nd 1y ago
>I'd expect it to work like a very junior programmer, but it works like a very drunk senior programmer that isn't listening to you very well at all.
This seems to be the current consensus.
A very similar quote from another recent AI article:
One host compares AI chatbots to “a very smart assistant who has a dozen Ph.D.s but is also high on ketamine like 30 percent of the time.”
https://lithub.com/what-happened-when-i-tried-to-replace-myself-with-chatgpt-in-my-english-classroom/ https://lithub.com/what-happened-when-i-tried-to-replace-mys...
- __loam 1y agoEven saying it has a dozen PhDs belies the reality that these things have no relationship with the truth
- briangriffinfan 1y agoYes yes yes we're all aware that these are word predictors and don't actually know anything or reason. But these random dice are somehow able to give reasonably seemingly well-educated answers a majority of the time and the fact that these programs don't technically know anything isn't going to slow the train down any.
- SpaceNoodled 1y ago"Majority" may be a bit generous, and would highly depend on the context and application.
- throwawaymaths 1y agoi just don't get why people say they don't reason. It's crazy talk. the kv cache is effectively a unidirectional turing machine so it should be possible to encode "reasoning" in there. and evidence shows that llms occasionally does some light reasoning. just because it's not great at it (hard to train for i suppose) doesn't mean it does it zero.
- briangriffinfan 1y agoWould I be crazy to say that the difference between reasoning and computation is sentience? This is an impulse with no justification but it rings true to me.
- throwawaymaths 1y agofine. prove to me llms aren't sentient. your proof can't just be "vibes"
- briangriffinfan 1y agoSee: "This is an impulse with no justification." In that sense yes my justification absolutely can be vibes, and it is! Suck it!
- throwawaymaths 1y agoi see we are in agreement
- DennisP 1y agoTaking a pragmatic approach, I would say that if the AI accomplishes something that, for humans, requires reasoning, then we should say that the AI is reasoning. That way we can have rational discussions about what the AI can actually do, without diverting into endless discussions about philosophy.
- mattkrause 1y agoEh... Suppose A solves a problem and writes the solution down. B reads the answer and repeats it. Is B reasoning, when asked the same question? What about one that sounds similar?
- briangriffinfan 1y agoCould it be said that reasoning requires intent?
- oceanplexian 1y agoI find statements like this kind of funny. If an AI assistant was the equivalent of “a dozen PhDs” at any of the places I’ve worked you would see an 80-95% productivity reduction by using it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- SpaceNoodled 1y agoYeah, we're only seeing a 20% reduction in productivity.
- fuzztester 1y ago>you would see an 80-95% productivity reduction by using it. they are the equivalent. there is already an 80-95% productivity reduction by just reading about them on Hacker News.
- throwawaymaths 1y agoyes, you are overestimating phds.
- Uehreka 1y agoTotally disagree. The current state of coding AIs is “a level 2 product manager who is a world class biker balancing on a unicycle trying to explain a concept in French to a Spanish genius who is only 4 years old.” I’m not going to explain what I mean, but if you’ve used Qwen Code you understand.
- jcelerier 1y agoQwen Code is really not representative of the state of the art though. With the right prompt I have no problem getting Claude to output me a complete codebase (e.g. a non trivial library interfacing with multiple hardware devices) with the specs I want, in modern c++ that builds, runs, has documentation and unit tests sourced from data sheets and manufacturer specs from the go
- v3xro 1y agoProbably the saddest comment I've read all day. Crafting software line-by-line is the best part of programming (maybe when dealing with hardware devices you can instead rely on auto-generated code from the register/memory region descriptions).
- nopinsight 1y agoHow long would that be economically viable when a sufficient number of people can generate high-qualify code in 1/10th the time? (Obviously, it will always be possible as a hobby.)
- esseph 1y agoI think eventually the move to "coding with AI" may be like the jump from coding in low level to higher level languages was.
- Uehreka 1y agoI was joking! Claude Code is still the best afaik, though I’d compare it more to “sending a 1440p HDR fax of your user story to a 4-armed mime whose mind is then read by a Aztec psychic who has taken just the right amount of NyQuil.”
- sellmesoap 1y agoTo be fair I've known 10x developers who are high on ketamine 100 percent of the time, it boggles my mind that this can work.
- pbronez 1y agoThe “multiple PhDs” thing is interesting. The point of a PhD is to master both a very specific subject and the research skills needed to advance the frontier of knowledge in that area. There’s also plenty of secondary issues, like figuring out the politics of academia and publishing enough to establish a reputation. I don’t think models are doing that. They certainly can retrieve a huge amount of information that would otherwise only be available to specialists such as people with PhDs… but I’m not convinced the models have the same level of understanding as a human PhD. It’s easy to test though- the models simply have to write and defend a dissertation! To my knowledge, this has not yet been done.
- fuzztester 1y ago>high on ketamine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine Because of its hallucinogenic properties?
- galangalalgol 1y agoBecause people like getting high and look for justifications to do so.
- fuzztester 1y agoLeft, right or center justification, it's all the same. But you're right.
- cess11 1y ago"Ketamine has been found to increase dopaminergic neurotransmission in the brain" This property is likely an important driver of ketamine abuse and it being rather strongly 'moreish', as well as the subjective experiences of strong expectation during a 'trip'. I.e. the tendency to develop redose loops approaching unconsciousness in a chase to 'get the message from the goddess' or whatever, which seems just out of reach (because it's actually a feeling of expectation and not actually a partially installed divine T3 rig).
- deterministic 1y agoIn my experience PhD's are not 10x productive. Quite the opposite actually. Too much theory and not much practicality. The only two developers that my company has fired for (basically) incompetency were PhD's in Computer Science. They couldn't deliver practical real code.