4 ms·
one does not just "throw tokens" at a problem, Ai is not that capable, and we are talking about MS Office file format, likely a NP hard problem
by verdverm 2mo ago
one does not just "throw tokens" at a problem, Ai is not that capable, and we are talking about MS Office file format, likely a NP hard problem
- sigbottle 2mo agoI mean, aside from all the NP Hard sub problems (I might not be reading your satire though), the real hard problem is that a "product" is not just software, but an ecosystem and a promise of maintenance of the abstract user experience & quality of it.
- vb-8448 2mo agoBut in case they succeed the return on image will be astonishing.
- doc_ick 2mo agoCan you expand upon this?
- vb-8448 2mo agoA full implementation/rewrite of something like word, which is pretty complex and the quantity of edge cases is insane, in a relatively short amount of time, months, is very hard. If they succeed with AI it will be huge: it's basically not possible to do it today with humans, no matter how many people you put on the job.
- doc_ick 2mo agoI would agree a full rewrite of word which is very complex and take quite a bit of time. It would be impressive of AI to make a 80% rewrite, though I fully doubt it would cover the 100% rewrite (disregarding long term support as well). Why do you think it’s impossible for humans to rewrite word, especially even humans made it in the first place?
- vb-8448 2mo agoI think it's not possible with humans in a relatively SHORT amount of time (let's say 1 year).
- doc_ick 2mo agoI’m not sure about you but I would not want to adopt and ship an overnight “word” written in rust
- vb-8448 2mo agoMe neither, but this is exactly my point: nowadays, no one will trust an "overnight word written in rust", unless someone prove that an "overnight word written in rust" is good enough. And big AI LABs, with basically infinite tokens, are the only one in the position to do it.
- doc_ick 2mo agoEven then, I would not trust an AI lab as Microsoft does have a long history of support for word whereas I’m not sure the level of continued support from AI labs. *support including bug fixes, vulnerabilities, continued user testing, interop with other services, standards, etc Right now even OpenAI has its own copy of Overleaf (for latex). I’m not in the same circles as it’s intended users, though I haven’t heard any major use of it since the splash.
- cpursley 2mo agoI'm not talking about that, but existing utility tools (in Rust) that can generate MS document format. Perhaps not perfect, but these work today.
- doc_ick 2mo agoI wouldn’t imagine recreating Apache poi would be a terrible reach for a human let alone a llm. Anything beyond basic utilities though I have a slightly harder time seeing.
- cpursley 2mo agoAI is especially good at ports like this where there’s a known and well tested surface area.
- verdverm 2mo ago"ports like this" skips the part about Microsoft/enterprise software having a known and well tested surface area, the few examples we've seen are exceptional cases I suspect
- johnsmith1840 2mo ago*that only microsoft has access to. These guys puposely obscure controls and understanding of these products 100% to prevent you doing a port. Just go open a microsoft word doc in the browser and look at the dom. Despair! Horror!
- doc_ick 2mo agoEspecially when there are three different versions, and each has a different team, and they all can work together at the same time. Crazy amount of tech supporting it that breaks a humans context let alone a models context.
- johnsmith1840 2mo agoYeah that's by far the most complex part. Ever letter is it's own object and they stitch it into the visual view. When you type one letter is turns a single word into multiple objects all versioned objects. Can't imagine all the crazy race condition protections baked into that.