171 karma · joined October 9, 2020
This makes sense and is very insightful, thank you. But with that solution it seems that only LLM companies will be in the position to create new languages.
I think you are underestimating the amount of data/context that is required to use a battle tested general purpose language, for both humans and LLMs. The ecosystem requires official docs, stack overflow answers, blog posts, tutorials, existing source code, subreddits, issue/PR discussions of undocumented features, obscure mailing list threads with rare insights, books, youtube videos, benchmarks, tests suits... and the ecosystem of libraries for the language that also need their own official docs, stack overflow answers...
You also need the collective audit by the community and assurance that this language has been used in production by countless others.
"LLMs dont create anything new, if programmers stop reading the code technology will be forever frozen to 2022, no new programming languages, operating systems, concurrency primitives, databases, networking protocols, UI frameworks everything will be based on the training data and future generations will forget about all the primitives we now take for granted.
If someone creates a new programming language/ framework or new better way to do async or whatever, no one will use it because it is not in the training data and it wont take off because everyone is using LLMs. It will be like using the same Lego pieces over and over."
Glad that you finally agree,this is what I was saying the whole time.
> This is trivially not true, as how has AI managed to become better than humans if the knowledge of how to do so never existed in the training data.
AI can do more work, faster, AI it only needs sufficient compute and data. But that does not mean it is more intelligent than humans, it still uses the same code, algorithms, frameworks, protocols etc etc that are in the training data, sourced from human open source code on the web.
I never said human games are meaningfully important for training AI. Human games are still important for the advancement of chess, maybe Magnus Carlson can learn from games between two Super AIs but most humans still learn from games by humans, Grandmasters are continuously developing the opening, middle-game and end-game systems, adding to the chess knowledge base. Every serious chess player still reviews and study games by prominent Grandmasters, every serious chess player documents their own games, writing down every move. All rated games are recorded and added to the chess database that every player can review and study.
>Does it? Or will AI be able to run its own experiments and find better/more efficient abstractions...
Only if it is in the training data.
Be more specific about the "new data". If everyone is using LLMs for work (generating code), especially the juniors who won't get the chance to learn from first principles, LLMs will be training on the data they generated. How will new code enter the system at large enough quantity that it can be used for training?
> It's _really not clear_ whether 2026 LLMs will be useless. To believe that reflects an enormous misunderstanding.
They won't be useless, they will just be frozen knowing only whats in their training data. No new programming languages will emerge, in 2526 they'll still be using Rust and javascript, same exact code from 2022 which dominates the training data.
Of course AI exceeds humans at chess, I never denied that. I am saying because chess is primarily a human vs human game, humans will always be learning and playing chess, their games will add to the chess knowledge base, AI also adds to this knowledge base. But programming is not primarily a human vs human activity so there is a risk programmers will forget how to code and all software will be stuck in 2022 because of the training data, this stifles innovation.
Two things can be true AI drastically contribute to the advancement of chess and humans playing against each other also contribute (even if slowly) to the advancement of chess as it has always been since the invention of the game. The point is that because chess is primarily a human vs human game humans will always have the knowledge of chess, unlike with programmers who are giving it up to prompting, and programming being much more complex than chess (checkmate and win) will be stuck in 2022 because of the training data.
How much of that data can lead to innovation? Can you predict all innovation map it out on paper.
> Computer Chess progress has nothing to do with human vs human activity.
The point is that humans will always be learning chess because it primarily a human vs human activity they will be contributing games to the chess database, unlike with programmers who are stopping to code and only prompting, generating code stuck in 2022.
> AlphaGo Zero used no human game data at all.
Sure, but that instance of AlphaGo is still dependent on its training, its intelligence, so it is a question of is that the best and only way to win a game of Go. Just a few weeks ago, a Go Grandmaster found a way to beat one of the strongest Go AIs.
So a specific instance of an LLM might be the smartest based on what we know and need today but that is not the limit of how far we can go, this is why it is important for humans to always have an intimate connection with the code, math, science, chess etc for progress to continue.
Chess/Go continues to progress because it is primarily a human vs human activity, people will always be learning to play chess and chess will continue to develop.
If someone creates a new programming language/ framework or new better way to do async or whatever, no one will use it because it is not in the training data and it wont take off because everyone is using LLMs. It will be like using the same Lego pieces over and over.
AI definitely makes the scams more believable, a Nigerian Prince can now easily forge documents.
But at the same time AI is a double edged sword, it can be used for both offence and defense.
Would you rather watch a chess tournament between two of the best human players in world, or between two of the best bots in the world?
I know that chess is deeper than this, its about the positions that are reached and what each game adds to the existing knowledge and in that case it doesn't matter if its a human or bot. I understand very well that there is allot a Grandmaster can learn from games between two strong bots.
But here I am talking about human nature on how we value things, if a human can do something that I can't do than I value that more, I know Usain Bolt is faster than me, I know he is extremly fast compared to myself and other humans.
I challenge you to a game of chess. Lets Go!
A chess game between to bots is boring, no matter how strong the bots are. Humans generally compare themselves to other humans and that's part of how they value.
Than there is another view where the forge is where you go to get code others have written, and this is where GitHub shines. Because of the collective audit.