Of all the points the "other side" makes, this one seems the most incoherent. Code is deterministic, AI isn’t. We don’t have to look at assembly, because a compiler produces the same result every time.

If you only understand the code by talking to AI, you would’ve been able to ask AI “how do we do a business feature” and ai would spit out a detailed answer, for a codebase that just says “pretend there is a codebase here”. This is of course an extreme example, and you would probably notice that, but this applies at all levels.

Any detail, anywhere cannot be fully trusted. I believe everyone’s goal should be to prompt ai such that code is the source of truth, and keep the code super readable.

If ai is so capable, it’s also capable of producing clean readable code. And we should be reading all of it.

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cheema33 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

“Of all the points the other side makes, this one seems the most incoherent. Code is deterministic, AI isn’t. We don’t have to look at assembly, because a compiler produces the same result every time.”

This is a valid argument. However, if you create test harnesses using multiple LLMs validating each other’s work, you can get very close to compiler-like deterministic behavior today. And this process will improve over time.

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hakunin 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It helps, but it doesn't make it deterministic. LLMs could all be misled together. A different story would be if we had deterministic models, where the exact same input always results in the exact same output. I'm not sure why we don't try this tbh.

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verdverm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I've been wondering if there are better random seeds, like how there are people who hunt for good seeds in Minecraft

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exe34 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

it's literally just setting T=0. except they are not as creative then. they don't explore alternative ideas from the mean.

	▲	hakunin 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Are you sure that it’s T=0. My comment’s first draft said “it can’t just be setting temp to zero can it?” But I felt like T is not enough. Try running the same prompt in new sessions with T=0, like “write a poem”. Will it produce the same poem each time? (I’m not where I can try it currently).

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otabdeveloper4 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> just add more magic turtles to the stack, bro

You're just amplifying hallucination and bias.

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ctoth 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> other side???

> We don’t have to look at assembly, because a compiler produces the same result every time.

This is technically true in the narrowest possible sense and practically misleading in almost every way that matters. Anyone who's had a bug that only manifests at -O2, or fought undefined behavior in C that two compilers handle differently, or watched MSVC and GCC produce meaningfully different codegen from identical source, or hit a Heisenbug that disappears when you add a printf ... the "deterministic compiler" is doing a LOT of work in that sentence that actual compilers don't deliver on.

Also what's with the "sides" and "camps?" ... why would you not keep your identity small here? Why define yourself as a {pro, anti} AI person so early? So weird!

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hakunin 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You just described deterministic behavior. Bugs are also deterministic. You don’t get different bugs every time you compile the same code the same way. With LLMs you do.

Re: “other side” - I’m quoting the grandparent’s framing.

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danny_codes 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

GCC is, I imagine, several orders of magnitude mor deterministic than an LLM.

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hakunin 3 hours ago | parent [-]

It’s not _more_ deterministic. It’s deterministic, period. The LLMs we use today are simply not.

	▲	philipswood an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Build systems may be deterministic in the narrow sense you use, but significant extra effort is required to make them reproducible. Engineering in the broader sense often deals with managing the outputs of variable systems to get known good outcomes to acceptable tolerances. Edit: added second paragraph