Don Knuth Plays with ChatGPT, in Context

https://gist.github.com/nhubbard/ebdfec02403393bd08805aaac774bd07

by nhubbard • 3 years ago

3 3 3 years ago

gist.github.com

nhubbard• 3 years ago

Hi HN,

I saw the interesting message posted yesterday where Don Knuth played with ChatGPT in a discussion with Stephen Wolfram [0]. However, the way the message was formatted, I found it very difficult to constantly scroll up and down reading the questions, responses, and discussion in separate sections. I reformatted the message, with extremely minimal editing (like replacing "chatGPT" with "ChatGPT" because I'm a bit of a pedant, or changing "Answer #x" in the discussion section to "This answer"), to make it easier to read, and wanted to share it with everyone else.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36012360

joaogui1• 3 years ago

Before this potentially blows up, I'll say a little on what I hoped this was given its title. I saw many comments on Knuth's lack of curiosity with ChatGPT, and I wanted to give context on it.

1. Knuth's magnum opus is titled "The Art of Computer Programming" and he's the author of literate programming. Furthermore he has written a symphony for the organ, Fantasia Apocalyptica. That is to say, his perspective on programming is not only on programming as a craft, a means to an end, but as an art, crafting a beautiful and elegant solution to a problem, that is correct and efficient. Neural Networks aren't really understood, solving problems through them, especially large language models, is far from what Knuth would consider elegant, and for many problems it's also neither correct nor efficient.

2. Again on the point of correctness, Knuth's work is mainly on mathematics and algorithms, things were proofs are extremely important. To him correctness, and this includes bounding how far an heuristic is from optimal, is of supreme importance. With large language models we don't really have these bounds, there are some for neural networks but the way LLMs work different from the usual clasification or regression objectives studiend in these cases. So once again LLMs are pretty far from his interests

3. He has a lot of work to do. In the sense that both he believes he has an obligation to work on TAoCP and getting as close to finishing the first 5 volumes (he has admitted that he may not have anything interesting to say for the last 2) as possible. He takes his commitments seriously, and he does feel he has taken many detours from the original plans, detours that he has loved like TeX and metafont, but still detours

4. He has a lot of life to live. This is a man who deeply loves his wife and who has mentioned feeling guilty for focusing too much on work in the past, and who would rather focus a little bit more on his family

So from the first 2 points LLMs are in general far from Knuth's interests, and the last 2 points we get that he's also pretty busy, so it makes total sense for him to decide, "you know what? I think I'll pass".

theGeatZhopa• 3 years ago

For sure a honorable man. But reading his story playing around with gpt is like reading an old man telling you about buying his first computer and being surprised, that this "electronic device" is capable to deliver proper calculations for questions like 1+1 and (7+2x-6)^34 ...

It's a kind not worthy a smart and curious mind. Like my Grandpa in his latter days.. "what's that Internet everyone is talking about? I want to take a look my self, because everyone is talking about it" ... "Nah, it is astounding, but it isn't for me. I'll pass "

No one wants to force mr Knuth to use LLMs, but if one's use it, or try it, i would expect that the pitfalls and problems are known.

Just like to act surprised when GPT forgets something or delivering some wrongs.. with a temperature of 0.7. Whatever that means. ...

Why is my understanding of GPT so far away from Knuth's? I do not understand GPT but see, we're in the beginning. All old guys argue like there won't be any iteration in development and that's is, and it's not capable to do basics properly. So it's the last shiaaat.

Don Knuth Plays with ChatGPT, in Context

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