alt Hacker NewsI do think there's something to be said for the big difference in the current abstraction layer jump - the loss of determinism. It is meaningfully different.
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People use the word "determinism" when they really mean something akin to "linearity", i.e. the predictability of a change in input on a change in output. Compilers for example are both deterministic and "more linear" in the sense that I can tell what the output will look like given a change in input (yes yes optimizations violate this to a small degree). LLMs can be made totally deterministic, but a seemingly insignificant change in input can create a drastic change in output, which is the characterstic we don't want.
If there is something to be said, I have to ask. What specifically is there to be said?
Plenty of physical (and biological) processes are subjectively non-deterministic outside clean rooms. Doesn’t mean our ancestors couldn’t forge and selectively breed.