Comment by kakugawa
4 hours ago
The more subtle point is that there's a gap between the task and its verification. e.g. if you have an open-ended / under-specified prompt, the verification needs to be able to handle all potential solutions.
So you can have a very narrow task prompt that's easy to verify (but likely too simple of a challenge). Or a more realistic task prompt that's much harder to verify. And likely harder to both build the robust verifier and run it cheaply.
A substantial portion of software engineering -- and the fundamental jobs of a proper Product Owner and UX Designer -- is to turn "vague ideas about what we need to do" into "this widget, on this page, it should work like this"
It's not a pipeline, it's an ongoing conversation within any functional team, but this requires buy-in from management, who is often selected for "line must go up this quarter no matter the cost" over "hey, wouldn't it be cool if this company was still a going concern in twenty years?"
Variance in time horizons explains a lot of corporate behaviour.
And it’s rational. We all have limited careers.
I think that all makes a bit more sense as we get older. Optimising for short time horizons is not what I strive for, but explains things.