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

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1479 points sandslash | 4 comments | 19 Jun 25 00:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.774s | source
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gchamonlive ◴[19 Jun 25 01:31 UTC] No.44314670[source]▶
I think it's interesting to juxtapose traditional coding, neural network weights and prompts because in many areas -- like the example of the self driving module having code being replaced by neural networks tuned to the target dataset representing the domain -- this will be quite useful.

However I think it's important to make it clear that given the hardware constraints of many environments the applicability of what's being called software 2.0 and 3.0 will be severely limited.

So instead of being replacements, these paradigms are more like extra tools in the tool belt. Code and prompts will live side by side, being used when convenient, but none a panacea.

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karpathy ◴[19 Jun 25 02:58 UTC] No.44315052[source]▶
I kind of say it in words (agreeing with you) but I agree the versioning is a bit confusing analogy because it usually additionally implies some kind of improvement. When I’m just trying to distinguish them as very different software categories.
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BobbyJo ◴[19 Jun 25 15:14 UTC] No.44319445[source]▶
The versioning makes sense to me. Software has a cycle where a new tool is created to solve a problem, and the problem winds up being meaty enough, and the tool effective enough, that the exploration of the problem space the tool unlocks is essentially a new category/skill/whatever.

computers -> assembly -> HLL -> web -> cloud -> AI

Nothing on that list has disappeared, but the work has changed enough to warrant a few major versions imo.

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1. TeMPOraL ◴[19 Jun 25 16:03 UTC] No.44319911[source]▶
For me it's even simpler:

V1.0: describing solutions to specific problems directly, precisely, for machines to execute.

V2.0: giving machine examples of good and bad answers to specific problems we don't know how to describe precisely, for machine to generalize from and solve such indirectly specified problem.

V3.0: telling machine what to do in plain language, for it to figure out and solve.

V2 was coded in V1 style, as a solution to problem of "build a tool that can solve problems defined as examples". V3 was created by feeding everything and the kitchen sink into V2 at the same time, so it learns to solve the problem of being general-purpose tool.

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2. BobbyJo ◴[19 Jun 25 17:24 UTC] No.44320699[source]▶
That's less a versioning of software and more a versioning of AI's role in software. None -> Partial -> Total. Its a valid scale with regard to AI's role specifically, but I think Karpathy was intending to make a point about software as a whole, and even the details of how that middle "Partial" era evolves.
3. lymbo ◴[20 Jun 25 02:21 UTC] No.44324186[source]▶
What are some predictions people are anticipating for V4?

My Hail Mary is it’s going to be groups of machines gathering real world data, creating their own protocols or forms of language isolated to their own systems in order to optimize that particular system’s workflow and data storage.

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4. lodovic ◴[20 Jun 25 05:31 UTC] No.44324996[source]▶
But that means AGI is going to write itself