You mean the English to code layer is stochastic while code to assembly is not?
This stochastic nature existed before AI. Humans are stochastic too. Two engineers convert specs to code in two different ways. I would argue the distribution is wider among humans than among agents.
As I said, "AI models don't replace compilers, they replace software developers" so yes, I agree that AI models are like humans.
while both LLMs and humans are not 100% deterministic, I don't think that's the interesting part. It's both true that there are many assembly language programs that implement a C program and that there are many valid programs (in any programming language) that correctly implement a natural language spec. But there's a significant qualitative difference between the two types of translation and that would be true regardless of whether the translations are stochastic.
"Time flies like an arrow" is a valid English sentence that one person can find numerous ways to interpret. A programming language that has the kind of ambiguous syntax that natural languages have would not be useful.
What makes agents useful is not simply that they interpret natural language, it is that they are interactive and ambiguous instructions can be corrected when the agent's output is not what the programmer intended. That is not the same as writing out a spec and giving it to a developer to implement.
The same compiler will convert source to binary in different ways! Hermetic builds are hard!
Even if we allow for hermetic builds in some cases in many many other cases your runtime will recompile your code based on its observations about your environment and that’s frequently what we want.
This fetishism of “determinism” seems crazy to anyone that has had to spend time really digging into modern JIT based compilation.
lol I saw the exact same JIT non determinism argument on reddit. The thing is, if JIT cannot replace a hotspot with a 100 percent functionally identical snippet of code then the JIT is just in time wrong and will be either patched, repaired or orphaned.
So all of a sudden all focus is on the word "determinism", and before even going down this route you have to agree on what aspect of the subject are you declaring to be "deterministic?"
Its sort of like chatting with libertarians, as soon as you agree that taxation is theft and democracy is tyranny then all problems melt away!
Arguing that two humans' distinct interpretations of a single specification is stochastic is patently absurd and requires, I think, some shred of evidence.
I would argue that, in the absence of such evidence, we cannot conclude that the English-to-code conversion process is stochastic; it is merely not deterministic, which is altogether different.
Would they write the same code, if given the same spec? No? How about over multiple trials? No? Even the individuals' own code would differ from one trial to the next?
Well, then, their interpretations of the spec are stochastic. Good enough for me, anyway.
The term 'stochastic' refers to characteristics or properties that are measured and/or understood on a statistical basis rather than on an individual basis, because they are driven or biased by random processes. What's your understanding of the term, if you're not working from a widely-accepted definition?
Two people interpreting a specification in different ways isn't stochastic because human processing is not a statistical process in any meaningful way. Or, to put it another way: given a specification, you could not reasonably enumerate all the ways two humans might interpret it, much less assign statistical likelihood to those outputs.
It’s ideological in that it’s generally used by people that are anti-AI, or are trying to call out some perceived problem with AI.
In my experience, as I alluded to, it’s not commonly used by people who are thinking seriously for themselves about the benefits, risks, and consequences of AI and the economic activity surrounding it.
That article only confirms what I’m saying. The author is describing their personal perspective on the word, but that’s not how it’s used in general, which is why the author received pushback on their undocumented and idiosyncratic usage.
Most of them are but when I need it to learn something from one already done I just point it to that workspace, like "For the invoices app take a look at inventory workspace and learn about X and Y" or "For Prince of Persia find all available code and references online and propose architecture changes to adapt to Swift on MacOS" so yes, it learns from both local or online sources
Yes that solve the knowledge part but there are also steps I need to repeat. Example: how to run a code based on risk level. That requires a tool, not just text.
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