have they tried writing better prompts? my lived experience says that because it works for me, it should work as long as you write good prompts. prompts prompts prompts. I am very smart. /s
Oh wow. The article says basically that but without the /s and then it gets even better. This is according to Mister AI Professor Ethan Mollick From The University Of Warthon and the link goes to a tweet (the highest form of academia) saying:
The problem with calling “prompt engineering” a form of programming is that it isn’t like what we call coding
In fact, coders are often bad at prompting because AI doesn’t do things consistently or work like code. The best prompters I know can’t code at all. They “teach” the AI.
Which is just great considering the next excuse in the text is:
this is due to insufficient reviews, either because the company has not implemented robust code quality and code-review practices, or because developers are scrutinising AI-written code less than they would scrutinise their own code
So who the fuck even reviews the prompt engineers’ code sludge, Mister AI Professor Of Twitter?
developers are scrutinising AI-written code less than they would scrutinise their own code
Wait, is this how Those People claim that Copilot actually "improved their productivity"? They just don't fucking read what the machine output?
I was always like "how can Copilot make me code faster if all it does is give me bad code to review which takes more than just writing it" and the answer is "what do you mean review"????
I fixed the quote from the article "programmers are not known for being great at writing prompts because many of us find the whole idea offensive and stupid"
I'm reminded of the guy in a previous thread who claimed LLMs helped him as a rubber duck partner. You know - the troubleshooting technique named for its efficacy when working with a bath toy.
Welcome to my new startup where we train LLMs on compiled binaries. Now you can just prompt and get a complete executable, no coding knowledge needed. We value our company at $5b, product launch date indeterminate
Thanks now you've sent me down the rabbit hole since I searched for this and clicked on the first ad: coderabbit.ai
One of the code reviews they feature on their homepage involves poor CodeRabbit misspelling a variable name, and then suggesting the exact opposite code of what would be correct for a "null check" (Suggesting if (object.field) return; when it should have suggested if (!object.field) return; or something like that).
You'd think AI companies would have wised up by this point and gone through all their pre-recorded demos with a fine comb so that marks users at least make it past the homepage, but I guess not.
Aside: It's not really accurate to describe if (object.field) as a null check in JS since other things like empty strings will fail the check, but maybe CodeRabbit is just an adorable baby JS reviewer!
Aside: the example was in a .jsx file. Does that stand for JavaScript XML? because oh lord that sounds cursed
"When asked about buggy AI [code], a common refrain is ‘it is not my code,’ meaning they feel less accountable because they didn’t write it.”
Strong they cut all my deadlines in half and gave me an OpenAI API key, so fuck it energy.
He stressed that this is not from want of care on the developer’s part but rather a lack of interest in “copy-editing code” on top of quality control processes being unprepared for the speed of AI adoption.
Reminds me of the story of the old engineer asked to come in and fix some machine in a factory.
The engineer inspects the machine, marks it with some chalk, then strikes the chalk mark with a hammer.
The machine works again.
The company asks for an itemised invoice after seeing the initial invoice for $10k.
To which they received:
hitting chalk mark with hammer: $1.
knowing where to place the chalk mark: $9,999
GPT suffers from garbage-in garbage-out just as much as a search engine does.
Knowing how to find search results to fix your specific situation is a skill.
Utilising GPT for such a task is equally a skill. With the added bonus of GPT randomly pulling the perfect API/Library out of its ass
on a slight tangent, I often think about this piece of writing. in general, but I've also started wondering what that picture's going to look like after the tsunami of LLMs suddenly finds it's actually made of air and not water
Yeah I feel like once people realize AI chatbots like ChatGPT are largely just search engines with AutoTldrBot built in, they'll be better at using them. ChatGPT is great for bouncing ideas off of or rubber-ducking through a solution. But just like with StackOverflow answers, you as the developer need to be able to recognize when ChatGPT is just spouting garbage, when it's getting you close to the answer, what adjustments you need to make to make its answers work for your situation, etc. In it's current state, it will never just magically hand you a fully developed, robust, well-integrated, complete solution though, as much as tech CEOs want it to.