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The LLM didn’t make a compiler. It generated code that could plausibly implement one. Humans made the compilers it was trained on. It took many such examples an

The LLM didn’t make a compiler. It generated code that could plausibly implement one. Humans made the compilers it was trained on. It took many such examples and examples of other compilers and thousands of books and articles and blog posts to train the model. It took years of tweaking, fitting, aligning and other tricks to make the model respond to queries with better, more plausible output. It never made, invented, or reasoned about compilers. It’s an algorithm and system running on a bunch of computers. The C compiler Anthropic got excited about was not a “working” compiler in the sense that you could replace GCC with it and compile the Linux kernel for all of the target platforms it supports. Their definition of, “works,” was that it passed some very basic tests. Same with SQLite translation from C to Rust. Gaping, poorly specified English prose is insufficient. Even with a human in the loop iterating on it. The Rust version is orders of magnitude slower and uses tons more memory. It’s not a drop in Rust-native replacement for SQLite. It’s something else if you want to try that. What mechanism in these systems is responsible for guessing the requirements and constraints missing in the prompts? If we improve that mechanism will we get it to generate a slightly more plausible C compiler or will it tell us that our specifications are insufficient and that we should learn more about compilers first? I’m sure its possible that there are cases where these tools can be useful. I’m not sure this is it though. AGI is purely hypothetical. We don’t simulate a black hole inside a computer and expect gravity to come out of it. We don’t simulate the weather systems on Earth and expect hurricanes to manifest from the computer. Whatever bar the people selling AI system have for AGI is a moving goalpost, a gimmick, a dream of potential to keep us hooked on what they’re selling right now. It’s unfortunate that the author nearly hits on why but just misses it. The quotes they chose to use nail it. The blog post they reference nearly gets it too. But they both end up giving AI too much credit. Generating a whole React application is probably a breath of fresh air. I don’t doubt anyone would enjoy that and marvel at it. Writing React code is very tedious. There’s just no reason to believe that it is anything more than it is or that we will see anything more than incremental and small improvements from here. If we see any more at all. It’s possible we’re near the limits of what we can do with LLMs.

bluegatty 7mo ago
Humans learned from prior art, and most of their inventions are modifications of prior art. You a are after all, mostly a biological machine. The point is - there are so many combinations and permutations of reality, that AI can easily create synthetically novel outcomes by exploring those options. It's just wrong to suggest that 'it was all in some textbook'. "here’s just no reason to believe that it is anything more than it is " It's almost ridiculous at face value, given that millions of people are using it for more than 'helping to write react apps every day'. It's far more likely that you've come to this conclusion because you're simply not using the tools creatively, or trying to elicit 'synthetic creativity' out of the AI, because it's frankly not that hard, and the kinds of work that it does goes well beyond 'automation'. This is not an argument, it's the lived experience of large swaths of individuals.
bluegatty 7mo ago
"I’m sure its possible that there are cases where these tools can be useful. I’m not sure this is it though. " You are arguing against the internet, motor cars and electricity. It's like 1998, and you're saying: "I'm sure it's possible there are cases where the internet can be useful. I'm not sure it is though" On 'hackernews' of all places. It's pretty wild to see that, and I think it says something about what hn has become (or maybe always was?).
andrekandre 7mo ago
> Writing React code is very tedious. slightly off-topic perhaps, but it makes me wonder if its so tedious how did it catch on in the first place... i feel like llms are abstracting away that tedium sometimes yes, but i feel its probably because the languages and frameworks we use aren't hitting the right abstractions and are too low level for what we are trying to do... idk just a thought
- agentultra 7mo ago
  I wouldn’t call what LLMs are doing an abstraction. They generate code. You just don’t have to write it. It can feel like it’s hiding details behind a new, precise semantic layer… but you’ll find out once the project gets to a certain size that is not the case: the details absolutely matter and you’ll be untangling a large knot of code (or prompting the AI to fix it for the seventh time). It’s a good thought and I tend to think that this is the way I would feel more productive: better languages that give us the ability to write better abstractions. Abstractions should provide us with new semantic layers that lose no precision and encapsulate lots of detail. They shouldn’t require us to follow patterns in our code and religiously generate boilerplate and configuration. That’s indirection and slop. It’s wasted code, wasted effort, and is why I find frameworks like React to be… not pleasant to use. I would rather generate the code that adds a button. It should be a single expression but for many reasons, in React, it isn’t.

bluegatty 7mo ago

Humans learned from prior art, and most of their inventions are modifications of prior art. You a are after all, mostly a biological machine. The point is - there are so many combinations and permutations of reality, that AI can easily create synthetically novel outcomes by exploring those options. It's just wrong to suggest that 'it was all in some textbook'. "here’s just no reason to believe that it is anything more than it is " It's almost ridiculous at face value, given that millions of people are using it for more than 'helping to write react apps every day'. It's far more likely that you've come to this conclusion because you're simply not using the tools creatively, or trying to elicit 'synthetic creativity' out of the AI, because it's frankly not that hard, and the kinds of work that it does goes well beyond 'automation'. This is not an argument, it's the lived experience of large swaths of individuals.

bluegatty 7mo ago

"I’m sure its possible that there are cases where these tools can be useful. I’m not sure this is it though. " You are arguing against the internet, motor cars and electricity. It's like 1998, and you're saying: "I'm sure it's possible there are cases where the internet can be useful. I'm not sure it is though" On 'hackernews' of all places. It's pretty wild to see that, and I think it says something about what hn has become (or maybe always was?).

andrekandre 7mo ago

> Writing React code is very tedious. slightly off-topic perhaps, but it makes me wonder if its so tedious how did it catch on in the first place... i feel like llms are abstracting away that tedium sometimes yes, but i feel its probably because the languages and frameworks we use aren't hitting the right abstractions and are too low level for what we are trying to do... idk just a thought

agentultra 7mo ago
I wouldn’t call what LLMs are doing an abstraction. They generate code. You just don’t have to write it. It can feel like it’s hiding details behind a new, precise semantic layer… but you’ll find out once the project gets to a certain size that is not the case: the details absolutely matter and you’ll be untangling a large knot of code (or prompting the AI to fix it for the seventh time). It’s a good thought and I tend to think that this is the way I would feel more productive: better languages that give us the ability to write better abstractions. Abstractions should provide us with new semantic layers that lose no precision and encapsulate lots of detail. They shouldn’t require us to follow patterns in our code and religiously generate boilerplate and configuration. That’s indirection and slop. It’s wasted code, wasted effort, and is why I find frameworks like React to be… not pleasant to use. I would rather generate the code that adds a button. It should be a single expression but for many reasons, in React, it isn’t.