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559 points Gricha | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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xnorswap ◴[] No.46233056[source]
Claude is really good at specific analysis, but really terrible at open-ended problems.

"Hey claude, I get this error message: <X>", and it'll often find the root cause quicker than I could.

"Hey claude, anything I could do to improve Y?", and it'll struggle beyond the basics that a linter might suggest.

It suggested enthusiastically a library for <work domain> and it was all "Recommended" about it, but when I pointed out that the library had been considered and rejected because <issue>, it understood and wrote up why that library suffered from that issue and why it was therefore unsuitable.

There's a significant blind-spot in current LLMs related to blue-sky thinking and creative problem solving. It can do structured problems very well, and it can transform unstructured data very well, but it can't deal with unstructured problems very well.

That may well change, so I don't want to embed that thought too deeply into my own priors, because the LLM space seems to evolve rapidly. I wouldn't want to find myself blind to the progress because I write it off from a class of problems.

But right now, the best way to help an LLM is have a deep understanding of the problem domain yourself, and just leverage it to do the grunt-work that you'd find boring.

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james_marks ◴[] No.46233206[source]
This is a key part of the AI love/hate flame war.

Very easy to write it off when it spins out on the open-ended problems, without seeing just how effective it can be once you zoom in.

Of course, zooming in that far gives back some of the promised gains.

Edit: typo

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1. hombre_fatal ◴[] No.46233380[source]
Go one level up:

    claude2() {
      claude "$(claude "Generate a prompt and TODO list that works towards this goal: <goal>$*</goal>" -p)"
    }

    $ claude2 pls give ranked ideas for make code better