I Built a Lisp for AI Agents

andreasronge.github.io

17 points·andreasronge··3 comments

I like.

On the issue of “are LLMs good at lisp” I have a bit of a tangential response/observation.

I saw this [paper](https://ai.meta.com/research/publications/logic-py-bridging-...) awhile ago. Long story short they made a python looking DSL for LLMs to convert natural language logic puzzles to. Then they converted the DSL expression to something a SAT/SMT solver could munch on.

My initial reaction was “why don’t they just have the LLM write smtlib2.” And I guess the answer is that LLMs are probably better at writing python-looking smtlib2. Probably an oversimplification of their work on my part. But I didn’t see any comparison between their work and a direct encoding into smtlib.

Makes me wonder if your idea could work along similar lines. Instead of using lisp directly, could you use a DSL that looks like more traditional languages? Would that help?

Interesting, I'm not familiar with that paper, but I guess the performance gain comes from raising the abstraction level (hiding solver boilerplate). PTC-Lisp could achieve the same thing by defining constraint-building functions as tools, and the LLM writes high-level PTC-Lisp that calls a solver. In fact, Lisp has a natural advantage here: instead of building a separate DSL with its own compiler (as I guess Logic.py did), Lisp can extend itself with macros — code is data, data is code - however this is not impl. yet in ptc-lisp.

Why not one of the standard lisps? Is there any lisp for beam?

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