Comment by wan23
3 hours ago
Have you ever encountered the very common real life situation where there's some software that works, and you have a binary for it but you either don't have the source code or it doesn't compile for whatever reason? This is the pre-LLM world. Now, do you think LLMs make this situation better or worse? You may not know what's wrong with your software or how to fix it, but unlike in the past you can throw compute at trying to figure it out, or replicating a subset of it, or even replicating all of it depending on what it is. I think LLMs are making this situation better not worse.
I think the problem with that sort of thought is that the burgeoning sizes of output for even trivial software makes it almost a certainty that:
a) The stuff output by the existing LLMs is too unwieldy even for them to handle , even if the product itself is a glorified chatbot.
b) If all software is throwaway, then the value of all software drops to, effectively, the price of an AI subscription. We'll all be drowning in a market of lemons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons), whilst also being producers in said market.
another aspect is amount of code LLMs can handle went from few lines to small codebase in few years, so future is just possible for a lot bigger codebases?