The problem is they are not i.i.d., so this doesn’t really work. It works a bit, which is in my opinion why chain-of-thought is effective (it gives the LLM a chance to posit a couple answers first). However, we’re already looking at “agents,” so they’re probably already doing chain-of-thought.
I have actually been doing this lately: iteratively prompting AI to write software and fix its errors until something useful comes out. It’s a lot like machine translation. I speak fluent C++, but I don’t speak Rust, but I can hammer away on the AI (with English language prompts) until it produces passable Rust for something I could write for myself in C++ in half the time and effort.
I also don’t speak Finnish, but Google Translate can take what I say in English and put it into at least somewhat comprehensible Finnish without egregious translation errors most of the time.
Is this useful? When C++ is getting banned for “security concerns” and Rust is the required language, it’s at least a little helpful.
Run something with a 70% failure rate 10x and you get to a cumulative 98% pass rate. LLMs don’t get tired and they can be run in parallel.
The problem is they are not i.i.d., so this doesn’t really work. It works a bit, which is in my opinion why chain-of-thought is effective (it gives the LLM a chance to posit a couple answers first). However, we’re already looking at “agents,” so they’re probably already doing chain-of-thought.
I have actually been doing this lately: iteratively prompting AI to write software and fix its errors until something useful comes out. It’s a lot like machine translation. I speak fluent C++, but I don’t speak Rust, but I can hammer away on the AI (with English language prompts) until it produces passable Rust for something I could write for myself in C++ in half the time and effort.
I also don’t speak Finnish, but Google Translate can take what I say in English and put it into at least somewhat comprehensible Finnish without egregious translation errors most of the time.
Is this useful? When C++ is getting banned for “security concerns” and Rust is the required language, it’s at least a little helpful.
I’m impressed you can make strides with Rust with AI. I am in a similar boat, except I’ve found LLMs are terrible with Rust.