[troupo]

> a set of rules, roles, and workflows that make its output predictable and valuable.

Let me stop you right there. Are you seriously talking about predictable when talking about a non-deterministic black box over which you have no control?

[andsoitis]

> Are you seriously talking about predictable when talking about a non-deterministic

Predictability and determinism are related but different concepts.

A system can be predictable in a probabilistic sense, rather than an exact, deterministic one. This means that while you may not be able to predict the precise outcome of a single event, you can accurately forecast the overall behavior of the system and the likelihood of different outcomes.

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/96145/determi...

Similarly, a system can be deterministic yet unpredictable due to practical limitations like sensitivity to initial conditions (chaos theory), lack of information, or the inability to compute predictions in time.

[sublinear]

The topic of chaos is underrated when people talk about deterministic systems, but I think it's at least (usually?/always?) a tractable problem to draw up a fractal or something and find the non-chaotic regions of a solution space. You have nice variables to work with when you draw up a model of the problem.

Maybe someone can elaborate better, but it seems there is no such luck trying to map probability onto problems the way "AI" is being used today. It's not just a matter of feeding it more data, but finding what data you haven't fed it or in some cases knowing you can't feed it some data because we have no known way to represent what is obvious to humans.

[troupo]

From the discussion in the link: "Predictability means that you can figure out what will happen next based on what happened previously."

Having used nearly all of the methods in the original article, I can predict that the output of the model is nearly indistinguishable from a coin toss for many, many, many rather obvious reasons.

[raincole]

Yes, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Living creatures are mostly black boxes. It doesn't mean we don't aim for making medicine with predictable effects (and side effects).

[sublinear]

I don't think that's accurate.

Don't most people working in medicine usually have biology and chemistry degrees? Are you saying those sciences are dark arts?

[raincole]

Having biology degrees doesn't make you understand every detail of human body. There are many, many drugs that are known to work (by double blind testing) but we don't know exactly how.

The details of how penicillin kills bacteria were discovered in 2000s. Only about half a century of after its commercial production. And I'm quite sure we'll still see some more missing puzzle pieces in the future.

[sublinear]

Yes, but I think we want to know how they work? Not knowing "exactly how" but having a good ballpark idea is not equivalent to letting AI throw stuff at the wall to see what sticks.

[troupo]

Medicine that can either kill you, cure you, or have no effect at any given time for the same disease is quite unlikely to even pass certification.

Do you know why?

[raincole]

That is exactly my point.

[troupo]

Then no one understands your point

[raincole]

Maybe you can try to read other comments below your original comment, as they mostly share the same point and I don't bother to repeat what everyone else has said.

I'll put it concisely:

Trying to build predictable result upon unpredictable, not fully understood mechanisms is an extremely common practice in every single field.

But anyway you think LLM is just coin toss so I won't engage with this sub-thread anymore.

[troupo]

And you should read replies to those replies, including yours.

Nothing in the current AI world is as predictable as, say, the medicine you can buy or you get prescribed. None of the shamanic "just one more prompt bro" rituals have the predicting power of physics laws. Etc.

You could reflect on that.

> But anyway you think LLM is just coin toss

A person telling me to "try to read comments" couldn't read and understand my comment.

[dist-epoch]

Non-deterministic does not mean not-predictable.

Quantum mechanics is non-deterministic, yet you can predict the motion of objects with exquisite precision.

All these "non-deterministic boxes" will give the same answer to the question "What is the capital of France"

[sublinear]

Yes, but the "exquisite precision" comes from the deterministic parts of physics.

[baq]

Nah. The only thing we can establish precisely at the lowest levels is probability. We can and do engineer systems to maximize probabilities of desired outcomes and minimize probabilities of undesirable ones.

Frankly I don’t understand how software engineers (not coders mind you) can have issues with non deterministic tools while browsing the web on a network which can stop working anytime for any reason.

[lbreakjai]

Because the failure modes are deterministic. An API can be down, which you can easily plan for, but if it's up and returning a 200, you can reasonably expect it to return what it's supposed to.

[brookst]

Would you say a top tier human developer produces predictable output? I would, in the sense that it will be well designed and implemented code that meets the requirements. Can we guess every variable name and logic choice? Probably not.

[troupo]

> Would you say a top tier human developer produces predictable output?

First you'd have to prove that LLMs can be equated to a "top tier human developer"

> I would, in the sense that it will be well designed and implemented code that meets the requirements.

Indeed. Something LLMs can or cannot do with all the predictability of a toss coin.

[brookst]

> First you'd have to prove that LLMs can be equated to a "top tier human developer"

Huh? Can you elaborate? I thought the claim was that predictable output is the gold standard and variance in LLM output means they can never rival humans.

Please restate if I missed why deterministic output is so important.

[signatoremo]

Huh? I guarantee you, if you give two different developers tbe exact sane set of requirements, that you’d get two very different programs. Try it. They likely perform differently also, performance- or resource-wise.

Would you still call that predictable? Of course you would, as long as they meet your requirements. Put it another way, anything is unpredictable depending on your level of scrutiny. AI is likely less predictable than human, doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful. You are free to dismiss it of course.

[troupo]

> Of course you would, as long as they meet your requirements.

Key word: "as long as they meet your requirements".

I've yet to meet an LLM that can predictably do that. Even on the same code with the same tools/prompt/rituals a few hours apart.

> AI is likely less predictable than human, doesn’t mean it isn’t helpful.

I'm struggling to see where I said they weren't helpful or that I dismissed them