Thread

1. LightMachine · 1789679503 · focus · HN ↗

   Hi, I'm the author.

   HN staff: someone posted before me. Could we change the title to "Bend - a language that blocks AI mistakes via proof and runs on GPUs"?

   Everyone: feel free to ask any question, but I'd be highly appreciative if you could be a bit civilized and respectful this time. I've worked on this for 1 year, nearly 16h/day, 7 days a week, and I'm giving it for free. You need not to use it. So, I'd be thankful if you could point occasional failures politely rather than throwing me in a lava pit.

   Thank you!

   1. pdpi · 1789681723 · focus · HN ↗

      Don't know whether this is a common outcome, but I tried the "remove the walls" example, and the result was... scary. It completely changed the game so that movement is now diagonal, and made the arbitrary decision that up/down move you on the positive diagonal, and left/right move you on the negative diagonal.

      The problem, of course, is that having only the one single "you can't win" law is severely underspecified, but the solution was too clever by half, and highlights the problem with this approach — every program will be under-specified, because, at some point, writing the laws becomes a bigger problem than writing the code itself.

      This becomes a real issue because the combination of underspecified but rigid laws pushes the aI towards this sort of "creative" solution that matches the letter but not spirit of the law. In this case, the issue was obvious, but I seriously worry about what sort of shenanigans will occur in less obvious cases.

      1. LightMachine · 1789682947 · focus · HN ↗

         Exactly, "you can't win" is grossly under-specified. The goal of the demo is just to show that laws can't be broken. Yet, if that's your only law, the AI can do whatever to protect it - including changing how the character moves, or even removing the flag entirely!

         So, yes, that's the issue with laws: they only protect what you remember to write. They're not a silver bullet. But they can still be incredibly useful, because it takes a small law to protect against entire classes of bug, covering your entire codebase. For example:

         LAW: "the sum of all balances in this contract must be zero"

         This one liner would have prevented Ethereum's infamous "The DAO" hack, where millions were stolen and almost undermined the entire project. But if your laws are under-specifying or ill-specifying your intents, Bend can't do anything to protect you.

         1. DeusExMachina · 1789730984 · focus · HN ↗

            > LAW: "the sum of all balances in this contract must be zero"

            What prevents AI from writing an arbitrary calculation that makes sure that sum is always zero while breaking a whole other bunch of assumptions?

            If the answer is more laws, then this does not address the parent comment.

            1. Isinlor · 1789744681 · focus · HN ↗

               Gross, obvious exploits can be easily picked up by AI reviews.

               1. yencabulator · 1789753560 · focus · HN ↗

                  And then the agentic loop over the reviews will rewrite them into less obvious exploits.
               2. DeusExMachina · 1789754133 · focus · HN ↗

                  What AI reviews? I thought AI needed to be bound by Bend laws.

                  The AI either knows what the user wants perfectly and is able to prevent problems, or is a rougue agent that needs to be bound by laws to not misbehave. You can't have both.

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