It can give you ideas and lead you to new paths when problem solving, you just have to be aware that its knowledge is planet wide but inch deep. I lost the count of how many times it conceptually gets "above the target" rather nicely and then its implementation is like a blind person throwing darts. I also lost the count of how many times it describes the code it wrote and it's like it has two brains, one which writes the descriprion and the other, ahem, a little bit "slower", that writes the code.
Classic debate looks like this:
- Hey how do you implement X in lang Y using Z?
- Certainly! Blablablah this code adds 1 and the return is 3!
- Your code returns 5 and it seems to add 2, fix it.
- I apologize for the oversight, here's the fixed version (replies with the same, maybe slightly altered, but still broken, code)
Well I guess ultimately one can't expect miracles from a statistics based token generation machine.
Sometimes I do wonder if the entire gen AI craze of the last few years is just one massive bubble and we're actually nowhere near AGI.
All the evidence I see when interacting with these models points towards them "knowing" things, but not "understanding" things, a context aware planet-scale Wikipedia. (Don't get me wrong, I still think LLMs are life changing for language specific tasks like translation etc., but they're just not in any way new forms of intelligent beings, which is what a lot of mainstream population and even some investors seem to think).
I'd ask that, look at the answer then write the code myself. Unless it's "how do you initialize a button in lang Y using Z?" or other trivial stuff like that.
> is just one massive bubble and we're actually nowhere near AGI
Correct.
> life changing for language specific tasks like translation etc
Translations can be even more dangerous than code IMO. Think contracts and other legalese where every word matters.
Also the difference between a great translation and a useless one when we're talking fiction is enormous. Great ones are basically a rewrite by someone who knows both the source and destination language and has enough literary talent to somehow translate the original's style, not only the words*.
There's a lot of middle ground where it doesn't really matter though.
* Think of translating Terry Pratchett. Or Lord of the Rings.
It can give you ideas and lead you to new paths when problem solving, you just have to be aware that its knowledge is planet wide but inch deep. I lost the count of how many times it conceptually gets "above the target" rather nicely and then its implementation is like a blind person throwing darts. I also lost the count of how many times it describes the code it wrote and it's like it has two brains, one which writes the descriprion and the other, ahem, a little bit "slower", that writes the code.
Classic debate looks like this:
- Hey how do you implement X in lang Y using Z? - Certainly! Blablablah this code adds 1 and the return is 3! - Your code returns 5 and it seems to add 2, fix it. - I apologize for the oversight, here's the fixed version (replies with the same, maybe slightly altered, but still broken, code)
Well I guess ultimately one can't expect miracles from a statistics based token generation machine.
Sometimes I do wonder if the entire gen AI craze of the last few years is just one massive bubble and we're actually nowhere near AGI.
All the evidence I see when interacting with these models points towards them "knowing" things, but not "understanding" things, a context aware planet-scale Wikipedia. (Don't get me wrong, I still think LLMs are life changing for language specific tasks like translation etc., but they're just not in any way new forms of intelligent beings, which is what a lot of mainstream population and even some investors seem to think).
> Hey how do you implement X in lang Y using Z?
I'd ask that, look at the answer then write the code myself. Unless it's "how do you initialize a button in lang Y using Z?" or other trivial stuff like that.
> is just one massive bubble and we're actually nowhere near AGI
Correct.
> life changing for language specific tasks like translation etc
Translations can be even more dangerous than code IMO. Think contracts and other legalese where every word matters.
Also the difference between a great translation and a useless one when we're talking fiction is enormous. Great ones are basically a rewrite by someone who knows both the source and destination language and has enough literary talent to somehow translate the original's style, not only the words*.
There's a lot of middle ground where it doesn't really matter though.
* Think of translating Terry Pratchett. Or Lord of the Rings.
That's what I use Copilot for. GPT-4 is better for higher level stuff.