Comment by skydhash
2 days ago
> I think is worth keeping in mind on the stack of possible approaches for, say agentic coding, that you can use a critic to not just ‘improve’ generated output, but most likely do some guided search through output space.
The one issue I keep finding with those approaches is that there’s already good tools for the problem, but we keep searching for wasteful approaches because “natural languages” for something humans are not going to interact without a good deal of training.
I do understand the hope of getting LLMs do the bulk of the work, and then after audit, we fix the errors. But both audit and fixing will require the same mental energy as writing the code in the first place. And possibly more time.
Specialist tools are always more expansive and offer more controls than general public tools. Most approaches with agentic coding is offering general interfaces instead of specialized interfaces, but redirecting you to a bespoke and badly designed specialized interface whenever you want to do anything useful.
I hear that. Counterpoint - if you all you have is a Philips-head screwdriver, all you have is a Philips-head screwdriver. On the other hand if all you have is a six axis CnC mill, well, then you have a lot.
I think of this less as audit misses, and more as developing a permanently useful tool. For open model weights, humanity will not (unless we’re talking real zombie apocalypse scenarios) lose these weights. They are an incredible global asset, so making them more generally useful and figuring out how to use them is super helpful.
Maybe they are useful. But I think there’s more usefulness in specialized databases and optimized approaches than betting everything on big llms models. Kinda like deriving linting rules and combining it with a rule engines to catch errors. Efficient and useful instead of continuously running a big llm model.
While it is hard to argue with the wisdom of crystallizing intellectual capital into our tools, I do wonder if these models might be as likely to diminish as to develop the person using them, in which case we trade an implement's iterative improvement for ours, in a way
Monks in the Middle Ages: “The Printing Press will destroy people’s ability to memorize.”
This was accurate. But mostly humans gained from books. I think we will develop the social technology to use these tools over time; giving some things up and gaining others.
If we don’t, the Amish can just take over and be like “Stupid English, using the devil’s weights.” :)