Readit NewsA Bus Factor of 0, especially as an implicit goal, seems doubly worrisome! Now it's a goal rather than a warning sign.
Shameful plug, i've been writing a book on this with my retrospective as a CTO building like this. I just updated it so you can choose your price (even $0) to make this a less shameful plug on HN: https://ctoretrospective.gumroad.com/l/own-your-system
I dont think anyone has the perfect answer, yet, but LLM-built systems arent that different from having the system built by 10 diff people on eLance/Upwork/Fiverr...so the principles are the same.
What TFA is arguing is that never before we had a trend towards Bus Factor zero. Before, the worst was often 1 (occasionally zero, of course, but now TFA argues we're aiming for zero whether we're aware or not).
If you have an LLM transform a big pile of structs, you plug them into your program and it will either compile or it won't.
All programmers write countless one-off throwaway scripts. I can't tell you how many times I've written scripts to generate boring boilerplate code.
How many hours do you spend reviewing such tools and their output? I'll bet anything it's just about zero.
I've also spent countless hours debugging throwaway scripts I wrote myself and which don't work exactly like I intended when I try them on test data.
"I don't comprehend what's going on and can hardly read, therefore my views about an invisible sky, man which cannot be proven in any way, are valid"
"I don't understand the world, and it sometimes seems unfair, so I find comfort in trusting there's some all seeing power who has a plan. I don't understand the plan because I'm flawed, but I trust the plan exists. In the end, I trust this powerful being will reward the just and punish the unjust (or redeem them by showing them the evil of their ways)".
As an atheist, I don't subscribe to this worldview at all, but I can see how it could comfort people. It's a way to explain the unexplainable, and to face the uncertainty of death, illness and tragedy.
I don't think the article was written by an LLM, but I'm convinced it was LLM-enabled. Which is a pity, because the author seems to have some interesting things to say. But that's the problem with leaning on an LLM: you lose your own voice, and good writing is centred around voice.
I thought the author was talking about Chiang's famous statement about LLMs being "lossy compression", and was ready to admit LLMs progress so fast this may not be the full picture.
However, this is not the author's actual criticism! TFA's states:
> I won't belabor obvious points like his nonfictional views on current-generation LLMs being surprisingly shallow [footnote]
The footnote then links to an alleged "rebuttal" to Chiang by Scott Alexander, link here: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/15/maybe-the-real-superin...
This alleged "rebuttal" is actually referencing this Buzzfeed article by Ted Chiang: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/tedchiang/the-real-dang....
Regardless of whether you agree or not with Ted Chiang, his article isn't about "current-generation LLMs"... it's about unchecked capitalism and the fears of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (at the risk of misrepresenting Chiang, he's saying it's ironic that Silicon Valley's worst fears resemble a sort of unchecked, rampant capitalism).
You don't need to agree with Chiang to realize he's article is sort of neutral on AI/LLM, and is actually a criticism of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs! TFA's author cannot critique his views on capitalism as "shallow" just because he disagrees with them, or misrepresent them as being about state-of-the-art AI/tech when they are actually about capitalism.
How could the article's author (and Scott Alexander) completely miss this?
With that said, trying to compare the two would be like trying to compare apples and oranges. Films and prose are two separate mediums. Some things which work well in one don't work in the other. It's like the difference between 2001 the film vs. 2001 the book - perhaps my favorite example since they were simultaneously written and directed as counterparts to each other (as opposed to one being based on the other, as is usually the case).
To name a few: the movie is way more sentimental -- I subscribe to the notion that "less is more" when trying to stir emotion, and I think Villeneuve overdid it -- and also has your standard "big movie" thriller/suspense/action moments that are completely unnecessary and are only there to make the movie commercially viable. I understand why they are there, but they are still blemishes.
To be fair, some things only work in the movie and are bits of genius, like when Louise suddenly asks why she's getting all these mental images of an unknown girl -- only then the viewer understands she's not remembering something from the past. It's a surprising moment and, to my recollection, it's only in the movie. Even if I misremember and it was in the story, the visual element works better.
The short story is perfect.
Very cerebral and great storytelling. The Chiang story where the mathematician discovers the horrible truth that 1+1=3 while her husband discovers he doesn't love her is ... I think Lem (or Dick) would be proud to have pulled that off.
Note: someone else commented that Chiang often seems dryer than PK Dick, which can make C feel like more work to read. Maybe that might be true sometimes :). But maybe it's only on the surface. If that makes sense. Chiang is condensed. Dick is ... not condensed.
Didn't PKD even write a nightmarish story about god and angels being literally true and punishing the infidel that echoes Chiang's story about "Hell.."?
I don't think Chiang is drier than PKD. I think he's a saner PKD, without the tendency to psychedelic ramblings. I say this as an absolute fan of PKD!
Re #1 It's been several years since I read up on that area of philosophy. I'll need to reread some stuff to decide whether I think the definition I used is a fine enough simplification for sci-fi readers (and, well, myself) vs whether it missed enough nuances that it's essentially misleading.
(Some academic philosophers follow me on substack so maybe they'll also end up correcting me at some point!)
Re #2 ah I don't think of it as "sneaking in". It's more like "this is a view I have, this is a view many of my readers likely also have, given that this is a widely debated topic (as you say) and I'm not going to change anybody's minds on the object level I'm just going to mention it and move on."
I understand you cannot write as if walking on egg shells; you have your position and maybe your readers do as well. But this is far from a settled matter, and Chiang's position (which was describing earlier rather than current LLMs, but I still think it arguably holds today) is arguably correct, or valid. I probably agree with Chiang more than I agree with you, which is why I find it odd to call it a blind or weak spot as if the matter was settled. Maybe "while I admire Chiang, I fundamentally disagree on some topics, such as LLMs" would have felt less jarring.
(Not saying you must write like this, and it's impossible to write in a way nobody will object to. I'm just explaining why I -- and presumably the person you're responding to -- found it jarring).
Spot on. 1 might as well be zero. Totally unfair to the worker also, who now cannot take time off.
This is precisely why the term "Bus Factor" was invented: to point out when it's 1, because it's both high risk to the company and unfair to the dev that cannot go on vacation or extended time off.