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Andrej Karpathy: Software in the era of AI [video]

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1481 points sandslash | 3 comments | 19 Jun 25 00:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.42s | source
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practal ◴[19 Jun 25 04:42 UTC] No.44315505[source]▶
Great talk, thanks for putting it online so quickly. I liked the idea of making the generation / verification loop go brrr, and one way to do this is to make verification not just a human task, but a machine task, where possible.

Yes, I am talking about formal verification, of course!

That also goes nicely together with "keeping the AI on a tight leash". It seems to clash though with "English is the new programming language". So the question is, can you hide the formal stuff under the hood, just like you can hide a calculator tool for arithmetic? Use informal English on the surface, while some of it is interpreted as a formal expression, put to work, and then reflected back in English? I think that is possible, if you have a formal language and logic that is flexible enough, and close enough to informal English.

Yes, I am talking about abstraction logic [1], of course :-)

So the goal would be to have English (German, ...) as the ONLY programming language, invisibly backed underneath by abstraction logic.

[1] http://abstractionlogic.com

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singularity2001 ◴[19 Jun 25 06:27 UTC] No.44316008[source]▶
lean 4/5 will be a rising star!
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practal ◴[19 Jun 25 07:54 UTC] No.44316452[source]▶
You would definitely think so, Lean is in a great position here!

I am betting though that type theory is not the right logic for this, and that Lean can be leapfrogged.

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1. voidhorse ◴[19 Jun 25 11:18 UTC] No.44317553[source]▶
Why? By the completeness theorem, shouldn't first order logic already be sufficient?

The calculus of constructions and other approaches are already available and proven. I'm not sure why we'd need a special logic for LLMs unless said logic somehow accounts for their inherently stochastic tendencies.

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2. practal ◴[19 Jun 25 11:52 UTC] No.44317774[source]▶
If first-order logic is already sufficient, why are most mature systems using a type theory? Because type theory is more ergonomic and practical than first-order logic. I just don't think that type theory is ergonomic and practical enough. That is not a special judgement with respect to LLMs, I want a better logic for myself as well. This has nothing to do with "stochastic tendencies". If it is easier to use for humans, it will be easier for LLMs as well.
3. tylerhou ◴[19 Jun 25 20:32 UTC] No.44322274[source]▶
Completeness for FOL specifically says that semantic implications (in the language of FOL) have syntactic proofs. There are many concepts that are inexpressible in FOL (for example, the class of all graphs which contain a cycle).