Re:LLMs are not superhuman at reading and writing neural net...
by antonvs on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @12:06AM
(#50348309)
That "faster and more effectively" part is undeniably superhuman, and it can result in qualitative leaps in capabilities.
For example, an LLM's ability to comprehend and explain a complex codebase, that it's never seen before, far outstrips that of any human.
People like to come up with factors to quantify how much more efficient LLMs are. A newly hired human developer working on a complex codebase can take months to get up to speed, to get a holistic understanding of how it works so that they're able to make non-trivial changes. An LLM can do it in minutes. That's a factor on the order of 10,000x.
It may not be "communing through some Matrix-like symbology," but at some point it starts to seem that way.
For example, an LLM's ability to comprehend and explain a complex codebase, that it's never seen before, far outstrips that of any human.
People like to come up with factors to quantify how much more efficient LLMs are. A newly hired human developer working on a complex codebase can take months to get up to speed, to get a holistic understanding of how it works so that they're able to make non-trivial changes. An LLM can do it in minutes. That's a factor on the order of 10,000x.
It may not be "communing through some Matrix-like symbology," but at some point it starts to seem that way.