Re:Human coders are still better than LLMs
by prisenco on Thursday May 29, 2025 @05:25PM
(#44130550)
It's true that manually constraining an LLM with contextual data increases their performance on that data (and reduces performance elsewhere), but that conflicts with the promise of AI as an everything machine. We were promised an everything machine but if we have to not only provide it the proper context, but already know what constitutes the proper context, then it is not in any way an everything machine.
Which means it's back to being a very useful tool, but not the earth-shattering disruptor we hoped (or worried) it would be.
Re:Human coders are still better than LLMs
by munksbeer on Thursday May 29, 2025 @06:37PM
(#44131046)
>Which means it's back to being a very useful tool, but not the earth-shattering disruptor we hoped (or worried) it would be.
Yet?
Re:Human coders are still better than LLMs
by prisenco on Thursday May 29, 2025 @06:43PM
(#44131083)
That could require another breakthrough. Or ten more.
Fun to consider but that much uncertainty isn't worth much.
Re:Human coders are still better than LLMs
by roywiggins on Thursday May 29, 2025 @10:14PM
(#44132160)
Depends on how good they get at realizing they need more context and tool use to look it up for you.
Re:Human coders are still better than LLMs
by prisenco on Thursday May 29, 2025 @11:11PM
(#44132474)
How would they reliably recognize the context needed without the necessary context?
Re:Human coders are still better than LLMs
by roywiggins on Friday May 30, 2025 @02:26PM
(#44138766)
in the case of hallucinating a library, give it access to an IDE's autocomplete or type checker or whatever so it can check if the functions it thinks exist actually do, if they don't, start feeding it documentation or type info about the library until it spits out stuff that type checks
For other stuff this is obviously harder.
With many existing systems, you can pull documentation into context pretty quickly to prevent the hallucination of APIs. In the near future it's obvious how that could be done automatically. I put my engine on the ground, ran it and it didn't even go anywhere; Ford will never beat horses.