[jlcummings]

Better wouldn’t necessarily be the right qualifier, but faster, typically more repeatable, and greatly more economical with scale/workload would certainly fit as better from different vantages.

With high novelty? Probably not until machine learning and compilers are deeply entangled.

[slaymaker1907]

That very much depends on the code. Program synthesis is an active area of research and the programs found would often be very difficult for a human to figure out. Of course a sufficiently determined human can always do whatever these programs do, but I do think it is unfair to give an unlimited amount of time to human optimizers.