I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"
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@cwebber exactly this. on the flip side, there seemed to be a vast desire among management types and maybe hobbyists for some super easy super high level language. but idk if it's even worth going there. avoiding the details only works until it doesn't
@mntmn @cwebber I think the single interesting thing LLMs have revealed is that there is a substantial market segment who has an active desire for natural language interfaces to the computer and who will flip from "do not engage to the computer" to "engage with the computer" if a natural language interface became available.
I do not personally want a natural language interface to the computer. I also do not believe the thing LLM vendors have built is a natural language interface to the computer
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@mntmn @cwebber I think the single interesting thing LLMs have revealed is that there is a substantial market segment who has an active desire for natural language interfaces to the computer and who will flip from "do not engage to the computer" to "engage with the computer" if a natural language interface became available.
I do not personally want a natural language interface to the computer. I also do not believe the thing LLM vendors have built is a natural language interface to the computer
@mcc @mntmn @cwebber I love the idea of a natural language interface for some tasks ("Exeter, download all PDF files from https://example.com/archive") but the implementations are all over designed fire that kind of task.
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@mcc @mntmn @cwebber I love the idea of a natural language interface for some tasks ("Exeter, download all PDF files from https://example.com/archive") but the implementations are all over designed fire that kind of task.
I once heard a joke that went something like:
Q: What's the highest level language you can program in?
A: Grad student.
(I only mention the joke because the underlying truth of it seems to be exposed in many ways, including the current LLM mess we're in.)
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I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"
Noooooooooo
NooooooooooooooooooooooooooooLLMs are not compilers, and they're not assemblers. Determinism is a key aspect to assemblers and compilers.
And they *certainly* can't be part of a reproducible pipeline
@cwebber To be fair, you can’t spell LLVM without LLM.
🤪
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@mntmn @cwebber I think the single interesting thing LLMs have revealed is that there is a substantial market segment who has an active desire for natural language interfaces to the computer and who will flip from "do not engage to the computer" to "engage with the computer" if a natural language interface became available.
I do not personally want a natural language interface to the computer. I also do not believe the thing LLM vendors have built is a natural language interface to the computer
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I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"
Noooooooooo
NooooooooooooooooooooooooooooLLMs are not compilers, and they're not assemblers. Determinism is a key aspect to assemblers and compilers.
And they *certainly* can't be part of a reproducible pipeline
@cwebber How the fuck did we go from "they're really good for boilerplate" to "they're basically the same as a compiler or assembler" with output quality either stagnating or getting worse?
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@mntmn @cwebber I think the single interesting thing LLMs have revealed is that there is a substantial market segment who has an active desire for natural language interfaces to the computer and who will flip from "do not engage to the computer" to "engage with the computer" if a natural language interface became available.
I do not personally want a natural language interface to the computer. I also do not believe the thing LLM vendors have built is a natural language interface to the computer
@mntmn @cwebber And I'd say "maybe the solution is to build a *good* natural language interface to the computer, so people use that instead" but I don't think a culture that believes LLMs are a computer interface (or are an "artificial intelligence"), could build or adopt such a system. If you put it side by side with the LLM the LLM will "win" because it is fail-open. A "good" interface would tell you when it can't do something, and then the user quits using it. An LLM can make something up.
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@mntmn @cwebber And I'd say "maybe the solution is to build a *good* natural language interface to the computer, so people use that instead" but I don't think a culture that believes LLMs are a computer interface (or are an "artificial intelligence"), could build or adopt such a system. If you put it side by side with the LLM the LLM will "win" because it is fail-open. A "good" interface would tell you when it can't do something, and then the user quits using it. An LLM can make something up.
@mcc@mastodon.social @mntmn@mastodon.social @cwebber@social.coop Yeah, and a good computer interface needs to be precise and unambiguous. Natural language is notoriously ambiguous, e.g. pilots and air traffic controllers have to train using precise terminology and phrasing, because a misunderstanding can have catastrophic consequences. I highly doubt people who don't feel like learning a programming language would want to learn a similarly (possibly more strictly) formalized variant of their natural language.
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@mntmn @cwebber And I'd say "maybe the solution is to build a *good* natural language interface to the computer, so people use that instead" but I don't think a culture that believes LLMs are a computer interface (or are an "artificial intelligence"), could build or adopt such a system. If you put it side by side with the LLM the LLM will "win" because it is fail-open. A "good" interface would tell you when it can't do something, and then the user quits using it. An LLM can make something up.
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@mntmn @cwebber I think the single interesting thing LLMs have revealed is that there is a substantial market segment who has an active desire for natural language interfaces to the computer and who will flip from "do not engage to the computer" to "engage with the computer" if a natural language interface became available.
I do not personally want a natural language interface to the computer. I also do not believe the thing LLM vendors have built is a natural language interface to the computer
I think there's a broader corollary (or perhaps it's actually a central subset of what you describe).
I always thought most people shared my experience that the exciting thing about the Internet, and good Internet search in particular, was that it offered access to the most relevant sources of information for any query. It was then on me to assess these sources and try to understand the topic at hand.
LLMs have resoundingly demonstrated that for most people this is all too much work and reminds them of school.
A majority of people clearly don't want to have to put in so much effort. They'd rather have an unambiguous answer that comes back and that they can treat as authoritative.
Sidenote - this is why mansplaining is a thing.
So, the primary (and I would argue, intended) result of the current "AI" mania is that the world is happily replumbing all its information and knowledge streams so that everyone receives whatever sanctioned propaganda those behind the curtain want to shovel out. (Pick a metaphor and stick with it ...)
LLMs are an assault on human communication and our ability to reason, organise and plan. They are the oligarch's wet dream.
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I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"
Noooooooooo
NooooooooooooooooooooooooooooLLMs are not compilers, and they're not assemblers. Determinism is a key aspect to assemblers and compilers.
And they *certainly* can't be part of a reproducible pipeline
@cwebber of course a deterministic LLM could be made. But ~noone would use it. Being able to reroll the dice is an important part of the confidence game.
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I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"
Noooooooooo
NooooooooooooooooooooooooooooLLMs are not compilers, and they're not assemblers. Determinism is a key aspect to assemblers and compilers.
And they *certainly* can't be part of a reproducible pipeline
We love it when changes have non-localized and unpredictable results;
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@cstanhope @mcc @mntmn @cwebber I like it.
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@ireneista @mntmn @cwebber well it's a general purpose UI *now* but only in a very monkeys paw way
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@cwebber of course a deterministic LLM could be made. But ~noone would use it. Being able to reroll the dice is an important part of the confidence game.
@joeyh I mean real talk that's why I don't play preset seeds in roguelikes, hooked on that RNG juice
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@mntmn @cwebber I think the single interesting thing LLMs have revealed is that there is a substantial market segment who has an active desire for natural language interfaces to the computer and who will flip from "do not engage to the computer" to "engage with the computer" if a natural language interface became available.
I do not personally want a natural language interface to the computer. I also do not believe the thing LLM vendors have built is a natural language interface to the computer
@mcc @mntmn @cwebber speaking of expanding to more users and of assembler:
An argument I've heard is that: in the past high level compiled languages have replaced assembler, and LLMs are the next step.
Well, assembler -- and assembler-adjacent stuff like C's SIMD intrinsics -- are still relied upon (think finely optimised low-lvl libraries in some fields like gaming, video codecs, and number crunching in scientific data analysis).
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@mcc @mntmn @cwebber speaking of expanding to more users and of assembler:
An argument I've heard is that: in the past high level compiled languages have replaced assembler, and LLMs are the next step.
Well, assembler -- and assembler-adjacent stuff like C's SIMD intrinsics -- are still relied upon (think finely optimised low-lvl libraries in some fields like gaming, video codecs, and number crunching in scientific data analysis).
...@mcc @mntmn @cwebber ...
It's not gone. I suspect there might be even more people with the know how than back in the days.
It's just that thier numbers haven't grown as fast as, e.g., the number of people who nowadays know only Python or other high-lvl languages, and would never dare to learn anything lower-lvl and would be abandonning computing back in the days.
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@mcc @mntmn @cwebber ...
It's not gone. I suspect there might be even more people with the know how than back in the days.
It's just that thier numbers haven't grown as fast as, e.g., the number of people who nowadays know only Python or other high-lvl languages, and would never dare to learn anything lower-lvl and would be abandonning computing back in the days.
...@mcc @mntmn @cwebber ...
Proper software engineering done by human with brains that can hold an actual mental model of the design implication isn't going away.At best, what we have is a (very unreliable) tool that will allow people who are utterly allergic to programming languages to still be able to play around code.
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I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"
Noooooooooo
NooooooooooooooooooooooooooooLLMs are not compilers, and they're not assemblers. Determinism is a key aspect to assemblers and compilers.
And they *certainly* can't be part of a reproducible pipeline
@cwebber they're lossy pseudorandom decompression
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@cstanhope @drwho @mcc @mntmn @cwebber And to bring it full circle, grad students *can* be compilers.
