Comment by js8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by js8 | Hacker News Reader

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Of course instructing agent is programming; the agent is an interpreter (albeit in some cases nondeterministic, but that's true for most programming languages that have a function to get current time) of the natural language. How exactly it is interpreted is given by the weights, the context, and possibly the random seed.

But even if we write in Python like foo.bar(), the interpretation depends on what is in module foo and function bar, how they are defined contextually.

You can try to find some difference but most modern AI agents come more close to a language interpreter than not, if the actual instructions are given.

OTOH, giving instructions to people is not programming. People do not consist of binary code that is reliably executed; they are biological organisms subject to environmental pressures such as being tired. They have their own consciousness and will, and can refuse to follow the instructions. LLMs are programs; they cannot decide not to respond.

If instructing an agent is programming then your boss 10 years ago telling you what the software should do is also programming

Having software build software is programming. An agent is software, a human isn't. I can draw a UML diagram, software generates code from that, and software turns it into binary. That still counts as programming I would say, we're just changing the language. Otherwise you would have to say that writing JavaScript is not programming because it's too far removed from Assembly.

It really is the determinism aspect for me. Okay, it’s programming if you sample at temperature 0 with a fixed seed on a fully deterministic inference stack and you have made your prompts the artifact that you iterate on (repo full of natural language that “builds” into the running software it describes with the use of the LLM sampling at temperature 0)

Why is everyone so hang on determinism? Monte Carlo methods are nondeterministic but still programming. We use random generators in many programs.

Having animals eat animals is food. An animal is food, a human isn't. I can draw up some hay, animals eat it, and another animal eats it. That still counts as food I would say, we're just changing the organism. Otherwise you would have to say that dogs aren't animals because it's too far removed from plants.

I think this is a category error. Are you trying to say that a human is software? Because humans are definitely animals. If the analogy is "what counts as eating?", then the equivalent is more like saying "my bicycle is an animal because it gets energy from me so therefore it's eating", but this metaphor is quite weak in the first place so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

> That still counts as programming I would say, we're just changing the language.

Anything can be anything it isn't once you start changing the language.

"When at first you don't succeed, redefine success."

> Having software build software is programming. An agent is software, a human isn't. I can draw a UML diagram, software generates code from that, and software turns it into binary.

It's not programming, it's cuckoldry. Articulating the perfect guy, inviting him over and watching him get to do all the stuff you used to enjoy literally makes you a manager.

I went to uni for electronic engineering, and I really enjoyed low-level programming, optimising memory etc. Now I'm a software engineer and I never think about memory because every high-level language has garbage collection. Does that make me a cuck?

Karpathy said it best. To paraphrase: there will be a rift of hate/love between programmers and builders respectively. You simply enjoy the craft a lot more that you enjoy the result of your craft.

There's nothing wrong with that, just as you can enjoy the effort and craftsmanship of hand-knitting a sweater. But some of us are more fulfilled by making nice clothes, and the labour (or delegation thereof) is a means to an end.

That's not really what we're talking about though. Compiling verilog from simulink or whatever is totally different than an agent writing code.

If you design a custom piece of furniture, then hire someone to build it, that's totally fine! But if you then tell everyone "I constructed this cool table," well, that's just not true.

That's because you interpret "I constructed" to mean "I hand-crafted" rather than "I designed". The problem with saying that is all about the intent of the person saying it, as well as what the average person can reasonably interpret it to mean.

This is the difference between "made in China" and "designed in California, assembled in China". People will generally not say "I constructed this table" just as an architect won't say "I built this house", unless you have the context that they're an architect or they're trying to mislead you.

There will come a time where by default we interpret "I built this software" not to mean that you literally wrote the code, unless you say that explicitly, just as when somebody says "I built this computer" we know it means they picked the parts, rather than soldered the boards, which is what it meant in Woz' day.

If I was brainwashed - maybe (hypnosis is sometimes called programming). But I am not, and AI agent is - it's trained to follow instructions, cannot help itself but do it.

Another difference is the binary code - I can run the same agent on a different computing substrate (e.g. different CPU), but with humans no one can do that. That has implications, we can study or modify AI agent behavior, for instance.

Humans can run on different diets

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