This is why I actually argue that LLMs don't use natural language. Natural language isn't just what's spoken by speakers right now. It's a living thing. Every day in conversation with fellow humans your very own natural language model changes. You'll hear some things for the first time, you'll hear others less, you'll say things that get your point across effectively first time, and you'll say some things that require a second or even third try. All of this is feedback to your model.
All I hear from LLM people is "you're just not using it right" or "it's all in the prompt" etc. That's not natural language. That's no different from programming any computer system.
I've found LLMs to be quite useful for language stuff like "rename this service across my whole Kubernetes cluster". But when it comes to specific things like "sort this API endpoint alphabetically" I find the amount of time to learn to construct an appropriate prompt is the same if I'd have just learnt to program, which I already have done. And then there's the energy used by the LLM to do it's thing which is enormously wasteful.
> All I hear from LLM people is "you're just not using it right" or "it's all in the prompt" etc. That's not natural language. That's no different from programming any computer system.
This right here is the nail on the head. When you use (a) language to ask a computer to return you a response, there's a word for that and it's "programming". You're programming the computer to return data. This is just programming at a higher level, but we've always been increasing the level at which we program. This is just a continuation of that. These systems are not magical, nor will they ever be.
All I hear from LLM people is "you're just not using it right" or "it's all in the prompt" etc. That's not natural language. That's no different from programming any computer system.
I've found LLMs to be quite useful for language stuff like "rename this service across my whole Kubernetes cluster". But when it comes to specific things like "sort this API endpoint alphabetically" I find the amount of time to learn to construct an appropriate prompt is the same if I'd have just learnt to program, which I already have done. And then there's the energy used by the LLM to do it's thing which is enormously wasteful.