[didierbreedt]

I’m waiting for a llm focused language. We’re already seeing AI is better with strongly typed languages. If we think about how an agent can ensure correctness as instructed by a human, as the priority, things could get interesting. Question is, will humans actually be able to make sense of it? Do we need to?

[suddenlybananas]

How could an LLM learn a programming language sufficiently well unless there is already a large corpus of human-written examples of that language?

[vbezhenar]

I'm pretty sure, ChatGPT could write a program in any language, which is similar enough to existing languages. So you could start by translating existing programs.

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

LLM could generate such a corpus, right? With feedback mechanisms such as side by side tests.

[tbossanova]

So… llm learns from a corpus it has created?

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

Yes. The learning comes from running tests on the program and ensuring they pass. So running as an agent. Tests and compiler give hard feedback- thats the data outside the model that it learns from.

I think modern RLHF schemes have models that train LLMs. LLMs teaching each other isn't new.

My knowledge is limited, just based on a read of https://huyenchip.com/2023/05/02/rlhf.html though.

[suddenlybananas]

RLHF

[hnlmorg]

It’s basically called “reinforced learning” and it’s a common technique for machine learning.

You provide a goal as a big reward (eg test passing), and smaller rewards for any particular behaviours you want to encourage, and then leave the machine to figure out the best way to achieve those rewards through trial and error.

After a few million attempts, you generally either have a decent result, or more data around additional weights you need to apply before reiterating on the training.

[suddenlybananas]

How do you define the goal? This kind of de novo neural program synthesis is a very hard problem.

[hnlmorg]

Defining the goal is the easy part: as I said in my OP, the goal is unit tests passing.

It’s the other weights that are harder. You might want execution speed to be one metric. But how do you add weights to prevent cheating (eg hardcoding the results)? Or use of anti-patterns like global variables? (For example. Though one could argue that scoped variables aren’t something an AI-first language would need)

This is where the human feedback part comes into play.

It’s definitely not an easy problem. But it’s still more pragmatic than having a human curate the corpus. Particularly considering the end goal (no pun intended) is having an AI-first programming language.

I should close off by saying that I’m very skeptical that there’s any real value in an AI-first PL. so all of this is just a thought experiment rather than something I’d advocate.

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

1. Choose set of code challenges (generate them, leetcode, AOC etc.)

2. LLM generates python solution and seperate python test (as in python test calls code as black box process so it can test non python code)

3. Agent using skills etc. tries to write new language let's call it Shark.

4. Run Shark code against test. If fails use agentic flows to correct until test passes.

5. Now have list of challenges, working code (maybe not beautiful) for training.

A bit of human spot checking may not go amiss!

[morkalork]

I've wondered about this too. What would a language look like if it were written with tokenization in mind, could you have a more dense and efficient form of encoding expressions? At the same time, the language could be more verbose and exacting because a human wouldn't bemoan reading or writing it.

[ModernMech]

I don't know if you've seen this: https://github.com/toon-format/toon

[morkalork]

I saw some memes about it being CSV but it actually makes a compelling use case for yet another format.