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pronlast Tuesday at 11:18 PM0 repliesview on HN

Maybe in the short term, but that doesn't solve some fundamental problems. Consider, NP problems, problems whose solutions can be easily verified. But that they can all be easily verified does not (as far as we know) mean they can all be easily solved. If we look at the P subset of NP, the problems that can be easily solved, then the easy verification is no longer their key feature. Rather, it is something else that distinguishes them from the harder problems in NP.

So let's say that, similarly, there are programming tasks that are easier and harder for agents to do well. If we know that a task is in the easy category, of course having tests is good, but since we already know that an agent does it well, the test isn't the crucial aspect. On the other hand, for a hard task, all the testing in the world may not be enough for the agent to succeed.

Longer term, I think it's more important to understand what's hard and what's easy for agents.