Comment by coldtea
5 hours ago
>If AI is natural language programming then they already had it in 1978, because AI is in fact "asking a programmer to write code for you"
That would just be the "I" part, since was missing the A for artificial: you asked a naturally made person.
And yes, nobody argued that they didn't have I in 1978, so I'm not sure what the argument is supposed to prove.
> I'm not sure what the argument is supposed to prove.
I’m guessing it’s supposed to show that if you have to have arbitrary levels of intelligence to interpret natural language, then nothing’s changed between now and 1978 when considering whether “natural language programming” is a thing. Just because the intelligence is artificial now doesn’t really change the answer.
>Just because the intelligence is artificial now doesn’t really change the answer.
Not only it changes the aswer, it's literally the whole of the question. When people talked of the posibility or imposibility of “natural language programming” they *always* meant "natural language instructions which *a machine* translates to running code".
They didn't have to spell it out, since nobody doubted a human programmer can write code when given natural language instructions - that was already a thing since ENIAC, if not since Ada Lovelace.
That's what we have now, and that's what changed between now and 1978 when considering whether “natural language programming” is a thing.