It’s surprising that it’s taken this long, given how good public AI coding assistants were a year ago.
The way I explain this to people is that current LLMs can be modeled as having three parts:
1. The improv actor, which is is amazing. 2. The reasoner, which is inconsistent but not totally hopeless at simple things. 3. The planner/execution/troubleshooting engine, which is still inferior to the average squirrel trying to raid a bird feeder.
Copilot is designed to rely on (1) and (2), but it is still almost entirely reliant on humans for (3). (GPT 4 Code Interpeter is slightly better at (3).)
Since I don’t really believe in any reliable way to control a super-human intelligence for long, I do not look forward to people completely fixing (3). Sometime after that point, we’re either pets or paperclips.
The way I explain this to people is that current LLMs can be modeled as having three parts:
1. The improv actor, which is is amazing.
2. The reasoner, which is inconsistent but not totally hopeless at simple things.
3. The planner/execution/troubleshooting engine, which is still inferior to the average squirrel trying to raid a bird feeder.
Copilot is designed to rely on (1) and (2), but it is still almost entirely reliant on humans for (3). (GPT 4 Code Interpeter is slightly better at (3).)
Since I don’t really believe in any reliable way to control a super-human intelligence for long, I do not look forward to people completely fixing (3). Sometime after that point, we’re either pets or paperclips.