Comment by rimesforfree
18 hours ago
I get that you want to save the world by reducing processing, and I agree that using an LLM to develop deterministic and efficient code is just a better idea overall, but “stop using natural language interfaces” is overly restrictive.
Interactive fiction / text-adventures written in the 20th century used a deterministic natural language interface with low load as an intentional flexible puzzle to solve, so the problem today is efficiency.
You could just as well argue to stop using modern bloated operating systems, websites, and apps. I understand that the processing required for LLMs can be much higher. But the side-effect of additional power needs will be a global push for more energy, which will result in more power stations being available for future industries once LLMs become more efficient.
If you want to reduce complexity overall and have simple, flexible interfaces and applications that use fewer of the worlds resources, I’m all for it. But don’t single out LLMs assuming they will always be less efficient. Cost will drive them to be more efficient over time.
>As a clear obvious example: interactive fiction / text-adventures use a deterministic natural language interface with low load as an intentional flexible puzzle to solve.
Even though games can technically do this, should they? Do consumers actually find it fun and engaging? Considering there has never been a AAA game of that genre I don't think there is true consumer demand for games with such an interface.
> never been a AAA game
Infocom sold 450k copies of Zork I and 250k copies of The Hitchhiker's Guide among their many other titles.
Beam Software sold over 1M copies of The Hobbit.
Sierra On-Line sold ~400k copies of King’s Quest VI in a week.
Indeed.
"Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold" or "You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike"
became early memes as a result.
However those memes also come from player frustration of being stuck in repeated patterns. The same can also happen with chat interfaces to LLMs.
However I'm not sure whether that's a function of the chat interface or the nature of LLMs.
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Those games did not have a high enough budget to be considered AAA.
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>never an AAA game
From the non-Infocom titles:
- Curses!
- Jigsaw
- Anchorhead
- Slouching towards Bedlam
- Spider and Web
and literally dozens more of outstanding quality.
From Infocom, most titles will qualify.
"Cost will drive them to be more efficient over time."
Why are you certain of this? It's just a database. Does this hold for e.g. Postgres?
Are there any successful examples of LLM text adventures? Last time I heard someone here said it's hard to develop robust puzzles and interactions, because it's hard to control and predict what the LLM will do in a dialogue setting. E.g. the user can submit reasonable but unintended solutions to a puzzle, which breaks the game.
stop using natural language interfaces is just a hyperbole.
Well, maybe an overreaching generalism. Not really hyperbole.