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by empthought 120 days ago
I know some proponents have AGI as their target, but to me it seems to be unrelated to the steadily increasing effectiveness of using LLMs to write computer code.

I think of it as just another leap in human-computer interface for programming, and a welcome one at that.
1 comments
nitwit005 120 days ago
If you imagine it just keeps improving, the end point would be some sort of AGI though. Logically, once you have something better at making software than humans, you can ask it to make a better AI than we were able to make.
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empthought 119 days ago
I don’t think that follows, nor do I think it will keep improving indefinitely. It will certainly continue to improve for a while.

We don’t need anything close to AGI to render the job “software engineer” as we know it today completely obsolete. Ever hear of a lorimer?

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nitwit005 119 days ago
If it doesn't follow, why not?

The other possibility is, as you say, progress slows down before its better than humans. But then how is it replacing them? How does a worse horse replace horses?

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empthought 119 days ago
I said I don’t think it follows, and you certainly gave no support for the idea that it must follow. Logically speaking, it’s possible for improvements to continue indefinitely in specific domains, and never come close to AGI.

Progress in LLMs will not slow down before they are better at programming than humans. Not “better than humans.” Better at programming. Just like computers are better than humans at a whole bunch of other things.

Computers have gotten steadily better at adding and multiplying and yet there is no AGI or expectation thereof as a result.

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nitwit005 118 days ago
Either the AI can do better than humans at programming, or it can't. If I ask it to make an improved AI, or better tools for making an improved AI, and it can't do it, then at best it's matching human output.

All the current AI success is due to computers getting better at adding and multiplying. That's genuinely the core of how they work. The people who believe AGI is imminent believe the opposite of that last claim.

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empthought 118 days ago
No one is talking about AGI in this thread except you, though. The post said nothing about it. It's an absolute non sequitur that you brought up yourself.
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