> Humans writing code are also non deterministic

That's not what determinism means though. A human coding something, irrespective of whether the code is right or wrong, is deterministic. We have a well defined cause and effect pathway. If I write bad code, I will have a bug - deterministic. If I write good code, my code compiles - still deterministic. If the coder is sick, he can't write code - deterministic again. You can determine the cause from the effect.

Every behavior in the physical World has a cause and effect chain.

On the other hand, you cannot determine why a LLM hallucinated. There is no way to retrace the path taken from input parameters to generated output. At least as of now. Maybe it will change in the future where we have tools that can retrace the path taken.

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afro88 42 minutes ago | parent [-]

You misunderstand. A coder will write different code for the same problem each time unless they have the solution 100% memorised. And even then a huge number of factors can influence them not being able to remember 100% of the memorised code, or opt for different variations.

People are inherently nondeterministic.

The code they (and AI) writes, once written, executes deterministically.

	▲	kshri24 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> A coder will write... or opt for different variations. Agreed. > People are inherently nondeterministic. We are getting into the realm of philosophy here. I, for one, believe in the idea of living organisms having no free will (or limited will to be more precise. but can also go so far as to say "dependent will"). So one can philosophically explain that people are deterministic, via concepts of Karma and rebirth. Of course none of this can be proven. So your argument can be true too. > The code they (and AI) writes, once written, executes deterministically. Yes. Execution is deterministic. I am however talking only about determinism in terms of being able to know the entire path: input to output. Not just the outputs characteristic (which is always going to be deterministic). It is the path from input to output that is not deterministic due to presence of a black box - the model.
	▲	bdangubic 36 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> The code they (and AI) writes, once written, executes deterministically. very rarely :)