Large Language Models and The End of Programming - CS50 Tech Talk with Dr. Matt Welsh

The field of Computer Science is headed for a major upheaval with the rise of large AI models, such as ChatGPT, that are capable of performing general-purpose reasoning and problem solving. We are headed for a future in which it will no longer be necessary to write computer programs. Rather, I believe that most software will eventually be replaced by AI models that, given an appropriate description of a task, will directly execute that task, without requiring the creation or maintenance of conventional software. In effect, large language models act as a virtual machine that is “programmed” in natural language. This talk will explore the implications of this prediction, drawing on recent research into the cognitive and task execution capabilities of large language models.

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David J. Malan

[amansahani]

"People, writing in C is a federal crime in 2023" is the most misleading statement, Man how you design low latency embedded systems without C? Lot of low level devices are depenedent on C. Even Tesla FSD or Autopilot uses C++. IOT devices use C.

[donesitackacom]

"AI will replace us all, anyway here's my startup"


Exactly 8 days later, OpenAI released a single feature (GPTs) that solved the entire premise of his startup.

[imba]

LLMs are going to replace idiots doing stupid talks 100%.

[miraculixxs]

'See I don't know how it works and I'm ok with that' - that pretty much sums up the presentation.

[linonator]

I get the clickbait title but it can be really discouraging to people who are thinking about getting into software engineering. “Like why even try if ai is gonna do it?”
Mainly because it’s coming from an institution like this. I know it’ll take time to eventually get there but A lot of people have already lost hope and new students thinking about joining may just turn a different direction

Note: I’m not speaking of myself here, I’m a senior engineer and I volunteer at coding camps on weekends and tutor online and I get this sentiment from the people I coach and teach. When you’re completely new to a field and you see things like this from a reputable institution along with all the hoopla of tech bloggers online, it does discourage many people from trying to enter this field.

[Denzelzeldi]

Don't waste your time on this talk, complete waste of time. Just another guy pitching his AI start up in the disguise of a lecture/talk. Also I really expected something revolutionary from his start up, it is basically just a different syntax for using ChatGPT API. Didn't expect this being endorsed on CS50.

[MarceloDezem]

"If the dev is not using copilot then he's fired". Tell me you never worked in a commercial application without telling me you've never worked in a commercial application.

[rohan]

He starts off with no one will code and he ends with his own programming language for AIs. lol

[fayezhesham]

I think it's time for Dr. Matt and his team to pivot away from fixie's custom chat GPT idea after OpenAI released GPTs.
How unexpected!

[fredg]

That reminds me when I was in middle school. My teacher had to teach us how to program in Basic but he really didn't want to. So he simply told us "in 2 or 3 years we will have speech recognition so you don't need to learn programming". That was 35 years ago... That's a bit bold to tell that programming languages have not improved the way we code in 50 years and to think AI will save us.

[firefiber]

I genuinely cannot understand how humans are just... incapable of thinking of the future. Like, the idea of 'just 'cause you can, doesn't mean you should' is just so much the case, right now. But nope, because we can, we will.

Okay, so we all slowly forget how to program, and we, generation after generation, depend more on language models writing code for us, and us just instructing the language models. Great, let's just, for a second, take this further shall we? First, the ways we communicate with language models are going to eventually become more like programming languages, because people are lazy, and the entire reason we have ANY symbols in mathematics PROVES this. We don't like to write more than we absolutely have to.

(EDIT: To expand on this - what I'm trying to say is this: we use specific patterns of sound in our languages to wrap up concepts, or ideas. We do this so that more complex communication can happen, by building on top of the layer below. We create functions in programming to wrap up sets of actions so that we can build on top of that. This is how abstraction works. I've used mathematical symbols as an example, but the same concept applies pretty much anywhere you look. Condense repetition, so that we can build more complexity on top.)

So we're going to get "AI" based programming dialects, you could say (look at the way image generation prompting has already evolved as an example).

Then, as we also develop these language models, the models themselves are going to have free rein on the 'coding' part. We will obviously instruct these systems to create newer programming languages that will, after a while, become unreadable to us. And we will ask, well, why do we need to understand it? The machines are there to handle it (this is essentially what this guy is saying). So now we have dialects of humans telling machines what to do, and then we have machines telling other machines what to do in a language we don't understand.

Does ANYONE see the issue with this? Like, even a little?

Just because programming is hard does not mean that we have to eliminate it. What absolutely idiotic thinking is this? It must always be a constant pursuit of efficiency. That's the whole point. We always remain in control. We always ultimately KNOW what is happening. By literally INTENTIONALLY taking ourselves out of the equation, we write our own Skynet. I don't mean that in an apocalyptic sense, I mean that in a "we are so fucking dumb as a species, like literally what is the point of programming, or doing anything at all, if not for our own benefit?" kind of way.

Sure, use these systems and tools to write better code, write better documentation, I mean these are the actual areas where AI systems can help us. Literally to write the documentation and help us write better, more efficient, cleaner code, faster than we ever could. But still code that WE READ, AND WE WRITE, for US.

This guy literally called Rust and Python "god awful languages" and apparently we need to take the humans out of developing things. Who does he think development is for?

What's weird is that this is on CS50?

[alborzjelvani]

The example with Conways game of life does no justice to the 50 years of programming language research he refers to. Also, Rust was designed to overcome the memory safety problems that plagued C and C++; it is a programming language that emphasizes performance and memory-safety. Programming languages like Fortran and C were designed the way they are for a very specific reason: They target Von Neumann architectures, and fall under the category of "Von Neumann programming languages". The goal of these languages is to provide humans with a language to specify the behavior of a Von Neumann machine, so of course the language itself will have constructs that model the von Neumann architecture. Programming languages like Rust or C do exactly what they were designed to do, they are not "attempts" to improve only code readability for Conways game of life when compared to Fortran.

[cruzjay]

He called CSS "a pile of garbage" and that writing C should be a federal crime. I smell senior engineer burnout, that want's to just cash in on his startup and work on a farm.

[abnabdullah]

I am amazed that students didn't ask about anything related to "security" because, right now, we are just seeing an innovation but what about the future, when, on a larger scale, if we say we want to build a public program like Facebook or any other platform. This is presuming to be a live programming or language model building whatsoever it is so how can we encrypt all of our data from building to running and so on.

[kpharck]

Law is written in plain English too. For reproducible results, the limit of input precision will lie where the modern legal jargon reaches it's least understandable form. You will be left with an input that is still as hard to comprehend as a programming language text, but much less precise. Good for YouTube descriptions perhaps, but not for avionics.

[MatchaLatteVlog]

Professor: Ai will replace all programmers
Students who took student loans to become programmers: 👁️👄👁️

[sortof]

surprise surprise, guy selling the shovel says gold rush is the best.

[ldandco]

Software Engineering will eventually be the role of just a few, not because of AI replacing jobs, but because of discouragment many people will feel and quitting before even starting the journey

[pjcamp-eqmj]

The talk was a perfect segway for AI startup ad

[SmoothHitt]

Do not be discouraged.
Enjoy life and study what you are interested in. Everything else will fall into its rightful place. Tomorrow is not guaranteed, do not fret about things beyond your control.