I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"

[cwebber@social.coop]

I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"

Noooooooooo
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

LLMs 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

[eramdam@social.erambert.me]

@cwebber If I hear "LLMs are like higher level languages" one more time I will end up on the news, i think

[mntmn@mastodon.social]

@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

[canacar@ioc.exchange]

@cwebber in the context of rewriting code, though, I think they should be treated like a "translation" tool (like compilers and linkers) and should not be able to change the copyright of the original (other than adding more ambiguity, I suppose).

[krans@mastodon.me.uk]

@cwebber LLM-boosting colleagues keep making this assertion and then retracting it after they see my facial expression

[jaredwhite@indieweb.social]

@cwebber Not only do I hear stuff like this from regular brogrammers, I've even heard it from people I've traditionally admired a great deal for being (to date) serious developers and stewards of platforms & APIs.

I. Don't. Get. It. At. All.

Please make it make sense!! (I know, it doesn't… )

[downey@floss.social]

@jaredwhite

llm psychosis is real

@cwebber

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@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

[drwho@masto.hackers.town]

@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.

[cstanhope@social.coop]

@drwho @mcc @mntmn @cwebber

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.)

[kirtai@tech.lgbt]

@cwebber
I think that's the worst part about them.
They confidently give you total lies.

Give me deterministic helpers any day.
At least the worst you can get there is an error.

(Other than the psychosis they cause)

[bennomatic@appdot.net]

@cwebber To be fair, you can’t spell LLVM without LLM.

🤪

[lritter@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@mcc @mntmn @cwebber wittgenstein would hate all this with the intensity of a 1000 suns

[ferret@hub.workersofthe.world]

@Christine Lemmer-Webber Run plenty of experiments even with just LLMs giving the same prompt and getting extremely different, even sometimes contrastive results. We don't even really understand how they work in the first place, so anyone suggesting they're anything like assemblers or compilers is out of their mind.

[disorderlyf@todon.eu]

@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?

[mcc@mastodon.social]

@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.

[airtower@woem.men]

@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.

[ireneista@adhd.irenes.space]

@mcc @mntmn @cwebber we aren't quite sure where to start in telling this story, so maybe we won't get into detail, but we were shocked to realize that megacorps have no ambitions for voice assistants beyond turning light bulbs on and off. no desire to build a general-purpose UI at all.

[dhobern@scicomm.xyz]

@mcc @mntmn @cwebber

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.

[joeyh@sunbeam.city]

@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.