- Correct by construction: the language makes invalid states or programs hard or impossible to express.
- Statically established: types, proofs, and static analysis establish properties before execution.
- Runtime-enforced: memory management, isolation, capability boundaries, and other runtime enforced properties.
- Empirically validated: program validation through tests, property-based testing, and fuzzing.
---
Along with being familiar, so it's easy to generate, is a huge part of why I'm building Zena: <a href="https://zena-lang.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://zena-lang.dev/
I don't have the AI-first rationale put into the public docs well just yet, but I mention some of it here: <a href="https://zena-lang.dev/guide/why-zena/#familiar-to-humans-and-to-agents" rel="nofollow">https://zena-lang.dev/guide/why-zena/#familiar-to-humans-and...
along with a doc in the repo on this topic: <a href="https://github.com/elematic/zena/blob/main/docs/design/ai-first-language.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/elematic/zena/blob/main/docs/design/ai-fi...
In short, the more deterministic, automated, checks the better. AI can deal with a pedantic language. I intend to add statically verified structured concurrency, units of measure, contracts, and eventually more and more formal methods into the language so it can be a familiar TYpeScript-like base with as many static guarantees as we can fit in.
I also think that fine-grained isolation, which Zena gets via Web Assembly, is critical for limiting the capabilities of generated code and the blast radius of bugs, vulnerabilities, and non-aligned behavior.
I do have an optimistic hope that a language also optimized for humans, readability and simple semantics especially, has value in the future, even when most code is generated. We'll see about that.
Agents are fairly good even at languages designed to trick them. I built one[1] and it does make for a good benchmark[2] to see which LLMs are actually good. I think that a language which is largely similar to others will be a piece of cake for most and any advantage that an existing language will have will be minor enough to not matter.
Btw if folks have ideas of how to make Killswitch even harder for LLMs I’d appreciate them.
Alternatively, this might accurately identify Chinese models so you can avoid them if that's your goal
Personally I don't have much interest in using models that blatantly censor historical facts.
Tiananmen Square is an obvious one but I would be concerned that any model that censors that would also have other hidden censorship or more subtle biases I wouldn't catch
spankalee · · focus · HN ↗
---
- Correct by construction: the language makes invalid states or programs hard or impossible to express.
- Statically established: types, proofs, and static analysis establish properties before execution.
- Runtime-enforced: memory management, isolation, capability boundaries, and other runtime enforced properties.
- Empirically validated: program validation through tests, property-based testing, and fuzzing.
---
Along with being familiar, so it's easy to generate, is a huge part of why I'm building Zena: <a href="https://zena-lang.dev/" rel="nofollow">https://zena-lang.dev/
I don't have the AI-first rationale put into the public docs well just yet, but I mention some of it here: <a href="https://zena-lang.dev/guide/why-zena/#familiar-to-humans-and-to-agents" rel="nofollow">https://zena-lang.dev/guide/why-zena/#familiar-to-humans-and...
along with a doc in the repo on this topic: <a href="https://github.com/elematic/zena/blob/main/docs/design/ai-first-language.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/elematic/zena/blob/main/docs/design/ai-fi...
In short, the more deterministic, automated, checks the better. AI can deal with a pedantic language. I intend to add statically verified structured concurrency, units of measure, contracts, and eventually more and more formal methods into the language so it can be a familiar TYpeScript-like base with as many static guarantees as we can fit in.
I also think that fine-grained isolation, which Zena gets via Web Assembly, is critical for limiting the capabilities of generated code and the blast radius of bugs, vulnerabilities, and non-aligned behavior.
I do have an optimistic hope that a language also optimized for humans, readability and simple semantics especially, has value in the future, even when most code is generated. We'll see about that.
demibabs · · focus · HN ↗
Agents will naturally be bad at it due to a lack of examples.
dom96 · · focus · HN ↗
Btw if folks have ideas of how to make Killswitch even harder for LLMs I’d appreciate them.
1 - <a href="https://killswitch-lang.org" rel="nofollow">https://killswitch-lang.org
2 - <a href="https://bench.killswitch-lang.org" rel="nofollow">https://bench.killswitch-lang.org
the_duke · · focus · HN ↗
Good one. Though this might unfairly bias against Chinese models?
bluefirebrand · · focus · HN ↗
Personally I don't have much interest in using models that blatantly censor historical facts.
Tiananmen Square is an obvious one but I would be concerned that any model that censors that would also have other hidden censorship or more subtle biases I wouldn't catch