Comment by pjc50
14 hours ago
> That is, work that's verifiable by a machine or doesn't require verification
That's where I'm at on the capabilities. LLMs have demolished software and mathematics because those have well-developed verification that's easier than doing the thing itself. Stuff that's more subjective they can produce good work, but with a significant error rate which makes it hard to let them loose on important client work without checking. Or rather, a number of companies are going through the cycle of trying that, having an expensive error, and reconsidering.
Or sometimes a company can simply pass the error cost onto consumers, who are gradually arming themselves with LLMs in response. We're going to see a productivity-sapping boom in disputes.
> demolished software and mathematics because those have well-developed verification that's easier than doing the thing itself
They are proving useful for the parts of those things that have that verification, but in neither case is that the whole of the field. In maths, for example, we have seen LLMs find answers to some interesting problems/conjectures, but haven't yet seen them pose any similarly interesting problems/conjectures themselves because the criteria for a "good conjecture" are unclear whereas the criteria for a resolution of an existing conjecture are usually supplied by the conjecture itself.
Did anyone ask? i.e. did anyone with enough background to be able to judge whether a conjecture is "good" just point it at the repo of solved problems and ask it to formulate new conjectures based on the results/proofs? Or ask it to propose new structures to study? Or to identify a previously unknown general technique/tool that it had used in a proof?
It was asked to do a specific thing, and then its brain turned off/was reallocated to something else entirely (e.g. CRUD programming or answering celebrity trivia). It doesn't just idly think in its downtime. If we want it to do something else, we need to ask.
> Did anyone ask?
Given how... motivated the major LLM manufacturers are for good press? I've zero doubt that they have.
lowering the cost and speeding up delivery will mature technology in other fields leading go the disruptive verification that ai needs