If natural language is used to specify work to the LLM, how can the output ever be trusted? You'll always need to make sure the program does what you want, rather than what you said.
Just create a very specific and very detailed prompt that is so specific that it starts including instructions and you came up with the most expensive programming language.
>"You'll always need to make sure the program does what you want, rather than what you said."
Yes, making sure the program does what you want. Which is already part of the existing software development life cycle. Just as using natural language to specify work already is: It's where things start and return to over and over throughout any project. Further: LLM's frequently understand what I want better than other developers. Sure, lots of times they don't. But they're a lot better at it than they were 6 months ago, and a year ago they barely did so at all save for scripts of a few dozen lines.
That's exactly my point, it's a nice tool in the toolbox, but for most tasks it's not fire-and-forget. You still have to do all the same verification you'd need to do with human written code.
You trust your natural language instructions thousand times a day. If you ask for a large black coffee, you can trust that is more or less what you’ll get. Occasionally you may get something so atrocious that you don’t dare to drink, but generally speaking you trust the coffee shop knows what you want. It you insist on a specific amount of coffee brewed at a specific temperature, however, you need tools to measure.
AI tools are similar. You can trust them because they are good enough, and you need a way (testing) to make sure what is produced meet your specific requirements. Of course they may fail for you, doesn’t mean they aren’t useful in other cases.
What’s to stop the barista putting sulphuric acid in your coffee? Well, mainly they don’t because they need a job and don’t want to go to prison. AIs don’t go to prison, so you’re hoping they won’t do it because you’ve promoted them well enough.
The person I'm replying to believes that there will be a point when you no longer need to test (or review) the output of LLMs, similar to how you don't think about the generated asm/bytecode/etc of a compiler.
That's what I disagree with - everything you said is obviously true, but I don't see how it's related to the discussion.
rootnod3|25 days ago
reverius42|25 days ago
ineedasername|24 days ago
Yes, making sure the program does what you want. Which is already part of the existing software development life cycle. Just as using natural language to specify work already is: It's where things start and return to over and over throughout any project. Further: LLM's frequently understand what I want better than other developers. Sure, lots of times they don't. But they're a lot better at it than they were 6 months ago, and a year ago they barely did so at all save for scripts of a few dozen lines.
sampullman|24 days ago
signatoremo|25 days ago
AI tools are similar. You can trust them because they are good enough, and you need a way (testing) to make sure what is produced meet your specific requirements. Of course they may fail for you, doesn’t mean they aren’t useful in other cases.
All of that is simply common sense.
rhubarbtree|24 days ago
What’s to stop the barista putting sulphuric acid in your coffee? Well, mainly they don’t because they need a job and don’t want to go to prison. AIs don’t go to prison, so you’re hoping they won’t do it because you’ve promoted them well enough.
oblio|24 days ago
Is that why we have legal codes spanning millions of pages?
sampullman|24 days ago
That's what I disagree with - everything you said is obviously true, but I don't see how it's related to the discussion.
wtetzner|24 days ago