I keep seeing lots of people saying "LLMs are like compilers/assemblers for prompts"
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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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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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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.
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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
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@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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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 oh, they could… if you operated them yourself. Snapshotting, and saving the PRNG seed.
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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 mostly agree, especially about them not being compilers, but some compilers aren't deterministic. You'll get a different result in memory layout or optimization sometimes. Especially for quantum compilers, where the compilation process itself is known to be NP hard, so heuristics are used.
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@cwebber If I hear "LLMs are like higher level languages" one more time I will end up on the news, i think
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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
PGO go brrrrr -
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 This is more like the Pentium 4 idea of predictive branching, but with even larger pipeline stalls. Except the P4 could still do math.
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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
For the people who compare an LLM to a compiler, the latter are not deterministic. They can not understand how sometimes* programs work, and sometimes they do not. The fault for this must be in the computer - hence LLMs equal compilers.
*depending on source code input and running conditions.
@cwebber -
@cwebber mostly agree, especially about them not being compilers, but some compilers aren't deterministic. You'll get a different result in memory layout or optimization sometimes. Especially for quantum compilers, where the compilation process itself is known to be NP hard, so heuristics are used.
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@cstanhope @mcc @mntmn @cwebber I like it.
@drwho @cstanhope @mcc @mntmn @cwebber Honestly, I would prefer LLM generated code over grad student generated code.
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
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@cwebber mostly agree, especially about them not being compilers, but some compilers aren't deterministic. You'll get a different result in memory layout or optimization sometimes. Especially for quantum compilers, where the compilation process itself is known to be NP hard, so heuristics are used.
@rdviii Ok but who's actually talking about *quantum compilers* when they are just saying "compilers" as a general term? ... other than people who work exclusively on QC's, who would be ... an incredibly tiny minority
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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 I am really Hung-up on the non-deterministic Character of LLMs lately. This essential quality makes them fit for solving specific kinds of problems und TOTALLY unfit for other kinds of problems.
I am working on my wisdom to get this right for each given problem. -
@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'm glad to see that someone else has considered this angle. It's always bugged me a little when I see the "they aren't deterministic" argument, but I've kept it to myself because nobody likes a pedant and of course @cwebber already understands as much.
I just worry that if this critique were to become more popular then the LLM makers would just implement the ability to specify a seed, then sit back and play the game where they say
we heard your criticism and have addressed it
Most people have no reason to have developed an advanced reasoning capacity about randomness, and I dread having to explain to them how something can be both deterministic and stochastic in nature
