[feanaro]

No, that's a completely different concept, because we have faultless machines which perfectly and deterministically translate high-level code into byte-level machine code. This is another case of (nearly) perfect abstraction.

On the other hand, the whole deal of the LLM is that it does so stochastically and unpredictably.

[Cthulhu_]

The unpredictable part isn't new - from a project manager's point of view, what's the difference between an LLM and a team of software engineers? Both, from that POV, are a black box. The "how" is not important to them, the details aren't important. What's important is that what they want is made a reality, and that customers can press on a button to add a product to their shopping cart (for example).

LLMs mean software developers let go of some control of how something is built, which makes one feel uneasy because a lot of the appeal of software development is control and predictability. But this is the same process that people go through as they go from coder to lead developer or architect or project manager - letting go of control. Some thrive in their new position, having a higher overview of the job, while some really can't handle it.

[bwestergard]

"But this is the same process that people go through as they go from coder to lead developer or architect or project manager - letting go of control."

In those circumstances, it's delegating control. And it's difficult to judge whether the authority you delegated is being misused if you lose touch with how to do the work itself. This comparison shouldn't be pushed too far, but it's not entirely unlike a compiler developer needing to retain the ability to understand machine code instructions.

[endymion-light]

As someone that started off with assembly issues for a large corporation - assembly code may sometimes contain very similiar issues that mroe high-level code those, the perfection of the abstraction is not guaranteed.

But yeah, there's currently a wide gap between that and a stochastic LLM.

[theshrike79]

We also have machines that can perfectly and deterministically check written code for correctness.

And the stohastic LLM can use those tools to check whether its work was sufficient, if not, it will try again - without human intervention. It will repeat this loop until the deterministic checks pass.

[gspr]

> We also have machines that can perfectly and deterministically check written code for correctness.

Please do provide a single example of this preposterous claim.