Thread

1. accurrent · 1789806302 · focus · HN ↗

   One thing that concerns me from all this is "understanding" is very important to human progress. The fact it took 400 years to crack Fermat's theorem resulted in a lot of "Side Quests". These side quests helped grow other fields (for instance elliptical cryptography). Im concerned with AI that we will loose these side quests.

   1. blfr · 1789806471 · focus · HN ↗

      I do neither maths nor science with AI but in my experience most models are perfectly willing to burn tokens on a ton of sidequests at the earliest opportunity.

      1. accurrent · 1789807310 · focus · HN ↗

         Yeah but do you read through and find if one of those side quests is useful?

         1. blfr · 1789813796 · focus · HN ↗

            They're often directly applicable: minor bugs, inconsistencies, missing tests, commonly also stuff I already now (like some infra config details).

            1. accurrent · 1789818836 · focus · HN ↗

               Minor bug and develop whole new field of cryptography are very different scales. I do agree alms are really good with a lot of common bug fix related tasks to the point you have to split commits out. The fact is you recognise it's a minor bug. Who is sitting through the proof of Navier Stokes and going through it and finding connections between itself and other fields? Im not saying LLMs are bad, but I do think understanding is important. Heck, the fact you identified the minor bug suggests you understand the output. Im not so sure the same can be said of a gajillion line lean dump.

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