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1246 points adrianh | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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kragen ◴[] No.44491713[source]
I've found this to be one of the most useful ways to use (at least) GPT-4 for programming. Instead of telling it how an API works, I make it guess, maybe starting with some example code to which a feature needs to be added. Sometimes it comes up with a better approach than I had thought of. Then I change the API so that its code works.

Conversely, I sometimes present it with some existing code and ask it what it does. If it gets it wrong, that's a good sign my API is confusing, and how.

These are ways to harness what neural networks are best at: not providing accurate information but making shit up that is highly plausible, "hallucination". Creativity, not logic.

(The best thing about this is that I don't have to spend my time carefully tracking down the bugs GPT-4 has cunningly concealed in its code, which often takes longer than just writing the code the usual way.)

There are multiple ways that an interface can be bad, and being unintuitive is the only one that this will fix. It could also be inherently inefficient or unreliable, for example, or lack composability. The AI won't help with those. But it can make sure your API is guessable and understandable, and that's very valuable.

Unfortunately, this only works with APIs that aren't already super popular.

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afavour ◴[] No.44492216[source]
From my perspective that’s fascinatingly upside down thinking that leads to you asking to lose your job.

AI is going to get the hang of coding to fill in the spaces (i.e. the part you’re doing) long before it’s able to intelligently design an API. Correct API design requires a lot of contextual information and forward planning for things that don’t exist today.

Right now it’s throwing spaghetti at the wall and you’re drawing around it.

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kragen ◴[] No.44492474[source]
Maybe. So far it seems to be a lot better at creative idea generation than at writing correct code, though apparently these "agentic" modes can often get close enough after enough iteration. (I haven't tried things like Cursor yet.)

I agree that it's also not currently capable of judging those creative ideas, so I have to do that.

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bbarnett ◴[] No.44493497[source]
This sort of discourse really grinds my gears. The framing of it, the conceptualization.

It's not creative at all, any more than taking the sum of text on a topic, and throwing a dart at it. It's a mild, short step beyond a weighted random, and certainly not capable of any real creativity.

Myriads of HN enthusiasts often chime in here "Are humans any more creative" and other blather. Well, that's a whataboutism, and doesn't detract from the fact that creative does not exist in the AI sphere.

I agree that you have to judge its output.

Also, sorry for hanging my comment here. Might seem over the top, but anytime I see 'creative' and 'AI', I have all sorts of dark thoughts. Dark, brooding thoughts with a sense of deep foreboding.

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LordDragonfang ◴[] No.44495312[source]
> Well, that's a whataboutism, and doesn't detract from the fact that creative does not exist in the AI sphere.

Pointing out that your working definition excludes reality isn't whataboutism, it's pointing out an isolated demand for rigor.

If you cannot clearly articulate how human creativity (the only other type of creativity that exists) is not impugned by the definition you're using as evidence that creativity "does not exist in the AI sphere", you're not arguing from a place of knowledge. Your assertion is just as much sophistry as the people who assert it is creativity. Unlike them, however, you're having to argue against instances where it does appear creative.

For my own two cents, I don't claim to fully understand how human creativity emerges, but I am confident that all human creative works rest heavily on a foundation of the synthesis of author's previous experiences, both personal and of others' creative works - and often more heavily the latter. If your justification for a lack of creativity is that LLMs are merely synthesizing from previous works, then your argument falls flat.

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1. kragen ◴[] No.44495397{3}[source]
Agreed.

"Whataboutism" is generally used to describe a more specific way of pointing out an isolated demand for rigor—specifically, answering an accusation of immoral misconduct with an accusation that the accuser is guilty of similar immoral misconduct. More broadly, "whataboutism" is a term for demands that morality be judged justly, by objective standards that apply equally to everyone, rather than by especially rigorous standards for a certain person or group. As with epistemic rigor, the great difficulty with inconsistent standards is that we can easily fall into the trap of applying unachievable standards to someone or some idea that we don't like.

So it makes some sense to use the term "whataboutism" for pointing out an isolated demand for rigor in the epistemic space. It's a correct identification of the same self-serving cognitive bias that "whataboutism" targets in the space of ethical reasoning, just in a different sphere.

There's the rhetorical problem that "whataboutism" is a derogatory term for demanding that everyone be judged by the same standards. Ultimately that makes it unpersuasive and even counterproductive, much like attacking someone with a racial slur—even if factually accurate, as long as the audience isn't racist, the racial slur serves only to tar the speaker with the taint of racism, rather than prejudicing the audience against its nominal target.

In this specific case, if you concede that humans are no more creative than AIs, then it logically follows that either AIs are creative to some degree, or humans are not creative at all. To maintain the second, you must adopt a definition of "creativity" demanding enough to exclude all human activity, which is not in keeping with any established use of the term; you're using a private definition, greatly limiting the usefulness of your reasoning to others.

And that is true even if the consequences of AIs being creative would be appalling.