Kerfuffle

Even if it only converts half of the codebase, that’s still a huge improvement.

The problem is it'll convert 100% of the code base but (you hope) 50% of it will actually be correct. Which 50%? That's left as an exercise to the reader. There's no human, no plan, no logic necessarily to how it was converted also so it can be very difficult to understand code like that and you can't ask the person who wrote why stuff is a certain way.

Understanding large, complex codebases one didn't write is a difficult task even under pretty ideal conditions.

This sounds no different than the static analysis tools we’ve had for COBOL for some time now.

One difference is people might kind of understand how the static analysis tools we've had for some time now actually work. LLMs are basically a black box. You also can't easily debug/fix a specific problem. The LLM produces wrong code in one particular case, what do you do? You can try performing fine tuning training with examples of the problem and what it should be but there's no guarantee that won't just change other stuff subtly and add a new issue for you to discovered at a future time.

Seems like we're on the same page. The only thing I disagreed with before is saying the output was random.

It has to match the prompt and make as much sense as possible

So it's specifically designed to make as much sense as possible.

and they should not be treated as ‘fact generating machines’.

You can't really "generate" facts, only recognize them. :) I know what you mean though and I generally agree. I'm really interested in LLM stuff but I definitely don't really trust them (and no one should currently anyway).

Why did this bot say that Hitler was a great leader? Because it was confused by some text that was fed into the model.

Most people are (rightfully) very hesitant to say anything positive about Hitler but he did accomplish some fairly impressive stuff. As horrible as their means were, Nazi Germany also advanced since quite a bit also. I am not saying it was justified, justifiable or good, but by a not entirely unreasonable definition of "great" he could qualify.

So I'd say it's not really that it got confused, it's that LLMs don't understand being cautious about statements like that. I'd also say I prefer the LLM to "look" at stuff objectively and try to answer rather than responding to anything remotely questionable with "Sorry, Dave I can't let you do that. There might be a sharp edge hidden somewhere and you could hurt yourself!" I hate being protected from myself without the ability to opt out.

I think part of the issue here is because the output from LLMs looks like a human might have wrote it people tend to anthropomorphize the LLM. They ask it for its best recipe using the ingredients bleach, water and kumquat jam and then are shocked when it gives them a recipe for bleach kumquat sauce.

It’s not supposed to be some enlightened, respectful, perfectly fair entity.

I'm with you so far.

It’s a tool for producing mostly random, grammatically correct text.

What? That's certainly not the purpose of LLMs and a lot of work has been done to improve the accuracy of their answers.

Is it still not good enough to rely on? Maybe, but that doesn't mean it's just for producing random text.

Being a hat, without any possibility of creating or interact seem like hell itself in its own right,

It could also easily be as boring as the boring choice.

Turning into inanimate object to live forever

I'd be surprised if the average hat really lives all that long.

I'm with you in choosing the boring life. Also, if worse comes to worse you can just off yourself. Not an option as a hat.

With how much war, malnutrition and unfairness and wealth inequality in the world, I wonder how many people would see at least the boring choice as a massive upgrade over the status quo? I'd guess it's probably a lot.

Dry beans are a lot cheaper than canned (less waste also). If you get a big pressure cooker, you can just soak a bunch of dried beans overnight and it only takes ~30min to cook up a massive pot of beans. Add more water and some stuff like carrots, onions and you'll have same tasty bean soup. Split peas are great for thickening soup and making it really hearty.

Of course, it's possible to cook beans/soup in a slow cooker or whatever but personally I love my pressure cooker and I've had less issues with burning stuff or uneven cooking as well. Great for steaming vegetables, potatoes (you can have mashed potatoes in ~15min). Can even use a pressure cooker to make rice and it's very fast.

The ones that make me happy are when passed family members or pets stop by for a visit.

Those kinds of dreams make me really sad. I'm always so happy in the dream thinking I was wrong that they were gone and then when I wake up and realize it was just a dream... it's hard.

Not sure if OP was talking about in the dream or not. For me at least, how I feel about it would be completely opposite.

so you’re arguing for no reason whatsoever.

This is some classic projection. What I said boiled down to "this solution may not be a good one, but there's some benefit to solving the problem". In your quest to find a way to criticize what I said, you ignored the first part of what I said entirely.

You seem to be one of those people who will just never admit it if you make a mistake. Doesn't matter if you accidentally said water is dry, you'll never admit water is wet until the end of time. I actually never understand why people dig in like this. It's not like you're saving face by refusing to acknowledge the mistake, it's not like you're going to convince me there's any doubt. Everyone makes mistakes and the best way to deal with them is to acknowledge it early and move on.

It’s not an improvement to have sauce dripping down the handle of your spoon and onto your saucepan handle, or to make yet another hazard over the stove by wedging a spoon precariously into a handle hole. That’s my point.

I started my comment with "The solution may be stupid but". That being the case, how could you possibly interpret it as me directly arguing for that particular solution being good?

I find it stunning that you are too lazy to rinse an extra plate, but weirdly insistent on the least logical, awkward, and ridiculous way to avoid it.

I find it stunning you are weirdly insistent on interpreting what I said in the absolutely least charitable way possible even though there's no reason to do so and I literally started my comment acknowledging that solution may be "stupid".

Actually, it seems like people on Lemmy are even worse about this than reddit which takes some doing. At least don't interpret stuff in ways that contradict what the person literally said a single post ago. Sometimes it's a little ambiguous, but not in this case.

I really haven't had an issue with them. I've been stung a few times, but usually I know what I did wrong. Once or twice my dogs made them mad and they ended up going for me.

I used to have this storage shed that was full of wasp nests. I don't mean just a few small nests, the wall was literally covered with wasps. I could go in there to fetch something and as long as I moved slowly they didn't seem to care. (Though I did try to avoid the day time and visit them when it was pretty cool and they were torpid.) Never even had a close call with those wasps.

Just use the dish you’re going to eat from if you’re really that lazy. This isn’t rocket science.

You're assuming the spoon has something I'd want to mix with the main dish on it, that I'm going to eat the food I'm cooking immediately, etc.

This only seems like a problem if you’ve never encountered an actual problem.

Little annoyances add up and small improvements to one's approach to dealing with things can add up as well. You know what makes those "actual problems" worse? Having to deal with a bunch of minor irritations at the same time.

Kind of weird that you seem to think it's ridiculous to want to improve anything that isn't a matter of life and death and earthshaking consequence.