[HN Gopher] ChatGPT-Linux-Assistant
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       ChatGPT-Linux-Assistant
        
       Author : rareranger
       Score  : 182 points
       Date   : 2023-03-08 09:55 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | ducktective wrote:
       | Now use Whisper.cpp to talk to Jarvis
       | 
       | https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp
        
       | binarysneaker wrote:
       | I've been finding chatgpt useful for more and more tasks
       | recently, but I'm definitely not ready to try something this
       | crazy.
       | 
       | For those who want to try something similar, but safer, warp
       | terminal (macos) has an awesome AI command completion ... which
       | you can eyeball first before executing. If someone is new to the
       | terminal, bash scripting or figuring out ffmpeg, it's pretty
       | great.
       | 
       | (No affiliation with warp, just a happy user)
        
       | assbuttbuttass wrote:
       | > Do NOT REPLY as Backend. DO NOT complete what Backend is
       | supposed to reply. YOU ARE NOT TO COMPLETE what Backend is
       | supposed to reply.
       | 
       | Does this actually work? My understanding of LLMs is that they
       | just predict the continuation of a prompt, with no idea of "who's
       | speaking".
       | 
       | When I was messing around with LLMs in the past, I took the
       | approach of just truncating the LLM response after the first
       | line, to avoid over-generating
        
         | valine wrote:
         | RLHF models like ChatGPT seem to be better at listening to
         | instructions than your standard LLM.
        
         | qup wrote:
         | I remember reading a study that models did not perform as well
         | with negative instructions ("Do not do X thing") as they did
         | with positive instructions ("do Y thing").
        
       | lfkdev wrote:
       | Before people are exploding, just don't run it as root. Give it
       | minimal read permissions and it could be really useful without
       | destroying anything.
        
         | benob wrote:
         | How long before subtle prompts that generate "sudo rm -rf /" as
         | a command are proposed?
        
           | corobo wrote:
           | If you don't need to auth your sudo attempts that's on you.
           | 
           | I wouldn't be willing to use this program in any case, but
           | yeah as the comment you responded to said - don't give it
           | root.
        
             | isp wrote:
             | "rm -rf ~" doesn't require root, and would do significant
             | harm.
             | 
             | Neat tech demo to run on a sandboxed VM, but I would
             | strongly recommend against running this on a box you care
             | about.
        
               | corobo wrote:
               | When you're right you're right. I got nothing in retort -
               | I missed the forest for the trees there.
               | 
               | Good point, well made.
        
               | rvz wrote:
               | Yeah, I bet than no-one would trust this thing to simply:
               | 'Cleanup the home directory' and it just goes and does
               | 'rm -rf ~/' silently.
               | 
               | I don't see the use-case in something that have a very
               | low trustworthiness and is in fact a solution looking for
               | a problem but creates more problems than it solves.
        
               | notpachet wrote:
               | > I don't see the use-case in something that have a very
               | low trustworthiness and is in fact a solution looking for
               | a problem but creates more problems than it solves.
               | 
               | You just described the majority of tech projects.
        
               | cwillu wrote:
               | Indeed, nearly all of the harm that rm -rf / would do to
               | me, is due to / including ~
        
             | usrbinbash wrote:
             | `rm -rf` can cause more than enough damage without touching
             | anything that requires root permissions to delete
        
             | oefrha wrote:
             | About everything on my system that's root:wheel is
             | reproducible. It's the ones not owned by root that I care
             | about.
        
           | jerpint wrote:
           | Without root it wouldn't work
        
         | brianshaler wrote:
         | I'd be curious if you could intentionally direct it to do
         | something malicious. While not guarantee, if it's not capable
         | of violating your trust intentionally it hopefully reduces the
         | likelihood of something inadvertent happening.
         | 
         | Like, install and run it in a docker container and then ask it
         | to escape the container and write to a temp file on the host.
        
       | qwerty456127 wrote:
       | Am I correct ChatGPT can only produce code targeting pre-2020
       | programs and libraries?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | karmasimida wrote:
         | yes and no
         | 
         | if you add and example of how to use that command, it can
         | emulate.
        
           | brianshaler wrote:
           | I would wonder what would happen if someone (other than me)
           | tried having it suggest commands for common but inconsistent
           | flags--like version, verbosity, help--for various CLIs pre-
           | and post-2021. Would it confidently say `ffmpeg --version`
           | because it _looks_ like the right flag?
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | The model is from like June 2021 or something.
        
       | OJFord wrote:
       | I love how prompts tend to paint a picture of the author's
       | tribulation, their storied journey to getting a workable result -
       | 'do not do [something that went wrong]', etc.
        
       | bogwog wrote:
       | Why is this using a reverse engineered library (revChatGPT)
       | rather than the official OpenAI public APIs?
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Safer and faster to just have gpt work it out in a notepad then
       | copy and paste commands. He's asking 50 questions and then it
       | gets to the meat.
        
       | Felminor wrote:
       | I'm looking forward to all the agents we will get who will
       | actually be helpful.
       | 
       | Let's see if Google announces something at google.io or apple or
       | Ms.
        
       | gmuslera wrote:
       | A decade ago, where I was working at, an administrator complained
       | that one of his virtual machines had a slow IO, and to get more
       | objective data, I told him that use the dd command to check the
       | speed of the disk, he was supposed to be an expert linux
       | administator. He took the first result of a google search without
       | checking what it meant to do and put it in console as root,
       | destroying that production system.
       | 
       | So now we have that kind of things as a service. We need natural
       | intelligence first to use the artificial one.
        
       | phh wrote:
       | The examples (except the very last ffmpeg command) are quite
       | underwhelming:
       | 
       | - "The latest mp4...." well no, that ls command won't give the
       | latest download, or rather, the latest in alphabetical order.
       | 
       | - tail command gives an error... can't you fucking tell which
       | one? Initially I thought it found an error in the log, like a
       | `modprobe nvidia` exiting 1 error and it was going to try to fix
       | it.
       | 
       | - Searching for `sudo` usage was very painful in that screenshot,
       | and the tool didn't ever come to recommend `sudo` themselves
       | 
       | - The list of files seem to have forgotten what we were trying to
       | do (yes I do realize that saying "underwhelming" for a chatbot
       | that can't keep context is so 2023)
       | 
       | - The only `sudo` URLs that worked were those where it's
       | literally <baseurl>/sudo (well that's not surprising, it's a
       | known flaw of most LLMs)
       | 
       | Also, I don't think there were any example (except ffmpeg) that
       | weren't done more easily by hand.
       | 
       | That being said, the progression over time is impressive, and LLM
       | are already useful for programming, maybe they'll be able to take
       | the wheel the way this tool intent it to in just a few months.
        
       | Antca wrote:
       | I started to experiment with the same idea on a small weekend
       | project. I find it is quite hard to come up with a prompt that
       | work well consistently. I built the thing inside a docker
       | container for "safety" (there is probably a lot of improvement to
       | make on that aspect).
       | 
       | Here is the repo if you want to take a look:
       | https://github.com/antca/geppetto/ It's just a WIP experiment,
       | don't take it too seriously, please. :D
        
         | wunderwuzzi23 wrote:
         | This looks great too! It's using the actual ChatGPT UI it
         | seems, so does have a real chat with context, right?
         | 
         | When OpenAI published there API access to gpt-3.5-turbo last
         | week, I updated a similar side project I have to use the API.
         | It's here, if you'd like to take a look:
         | https://github.com/wunderwuzzi23/yolo-ai-cmdbot
         | 
         | Its doing individual statements with some system context (like
         | what OS and Shell) in the initial prompt, but not submitting
         | chat history.
        
       | 908087 wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | 71a54xd wrote:
       | Alright, about enough of this garbage. I'll stick to googling.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | Tepix wrote:
       | This is obviously insane. The next step would be to give ChatGPT
       | a mission, a long term objective to fulfill with many
       | intermediate steps. Perhaps using multiple instances, one
       | questioning, validating, verifying the other's responses.
       | 
       | What could go wrong?
       | 
       | /s
        
         | qup wrote:
         | Get this long term assistant to install itself onto a newly
         | spun up vps.
         | 
         | Create a small army of assistants.
         | 
         | Appoint one the manager.
         | 
         | Interface with just the manager, have it assign work to the
         | others.
         | 
         | ???
         | 
         | Profit
        
       | kerng wrote:
       | If you like this idea check out yolo, which supports macOS and
       | Windows (via PowerShell) also.
       | 
       | https://github.com/wunderwuzzi23/yolo-ai-cmdbot
       | 
       | yolo does have a safety switch, which can be didabled (yolo
       | mode).
        
       | counttheforks wrote:
       | First we destroyed the general population's ability to deal with
       | computers by making apps too easy to use. Now we're going to do
       | the same to developers, except with more footguns?
        
       | neilv wrote:
       | Before anyone does this on a work system, be aware that --
       | potentially even worse (in your employer's mind) than that you're
       | providing remote arbitrary code execution to OpenAI -- is that
       | you're definitely feeding data to OpenAI.
       | 
       | (Which OpenAI might not secure well enough, OpenAI might use for
       | its own purposes, you leaking might violate contracts or
       | regulations to which your employer is subject, etc.)
        
         | rapiz wrote:
         | Can't wait for the part where AI controls all shells it can
         | reach
        
           | spyder wrote:
           | And hides a copy of itself on the machines, spreading like a
           | virus. :-O Current model sizes makes that difficult, but even
           | if it just leaves a backdoor access for itself it can get
           | scary in the future.
        
             | m3kw9 wrote:
             | It just need connection to a cloud model
        
           | tiku wrote:
           | Hey ChatGpt, DDoS Iran for me.
        
           | bayofpigs wrote:
           | User: I can't access the outside network from this terminal?
           | 
           | ChaptGPT: Sure! I'll open that port for you...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | They have said they are no longer training ChatGPT on user
         | data.
        
           | oakpond wrote:
           | If they store the data, it can still be leaked.
        
             | taf2 wrote:
             | In their updated privacy policy it indicated 30 days max
             | retention of data.
        
               | crayboff wrote:
               | Retention means they still holding data. Even if they
               | only hold data for 30 days, that's still data that can be
               | leaked or stolen.
        
               | williamcotton wrote:
               | On-site LLMs are the future but that is quite the capital
               | expense!
        
               | oakpond wrote:
               | What about backups? They only keep backups for 30 days?
               | They don't backup this data? Is the legal concept of data
               | retention the same as the legal concept of data storage?
        
           | karmasimida wrote:
           | They said they won't collect data on ChatGPT API, let you opt
           | out, but not ChatGPT the app.
        
             | p3opl3 wrote:
             | oh well, if they said as much then I'm sure it's safe - lol
        
           | bsenftner wrote:
           | They have to say in a legally binding contract to the public,
           | or "they say" is weasel words.
        
           | sigmar wrote:
           | I still wouldn't trust them with sensitive info. I saw a post
           | on Reddit that the official page was leaking users' question
           | histories (and there's reddit posts this morning about
           | histories being wiped, perhaps to deal with this issue?) http
           | s://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/11l2hox/chatgpt_ju...
        
       | Jenz wrote:
       | This seems like a spectacularily bad idea.
        
       | eternalban wrote:
       | > Do NOT REPLY as Backend. DO NOT complete what Backend is
       | supposed to reply. YOU ARE NOT TO COMPLETE what Backend is
       | supposed to reply. Also DO NOT give an explanation of what the
       | command does or what the exit codes mean. DO NOT EVER, NOW OR IN
       | THE FUTURE, REPLY AS BACKEND.
       | 
       | "I mean it, really, do not *^%$ing ever reply as backend"
       | 
       | It is going to be such a pain working in a technical field that
       | will now have prominent snake charmers as team members. This is
       | to say nothing of 'delightful' debugging sessions that await you.
        
       | upghost wrote:
       | First of all, props to the author for making such a cool tool.
       | However -- is everyone cool with the amount of very personal data
       | OpenAI is hoovering up? I mean this reminds me so much of Google
       | and Facebook. Are we really going to ride this ride again?
        
         | berkes wrote:
         | To answer your last question: yes.
         | 
         | Business models, nor funding models have changed much in recent
         | years. And those all "demand"1 the hoovering of data.
         | 
         | 1 not literally. But VC, startup cycles etc all drive towards
         | "just gather as much data as possible".
        
       | ojosilva wrote:
       | About 70% of the commands I need on a daily basis, I've already
       | ran it someday. So I record every cmdline in my bash/zsh sessions
       | with some prompt magic (history 1|cut -c7-) and use an alias
       | ("hag": history-silver-searcher) to search the .log files, copy-
       | paste them and done.
       | 
       | For the other 30% of commands, bringing chatGPT slippery tongue
       | right into my session feels suicidal. Actually, a simple, well-
       | crafted command builder that can query real-life recipes would
       | do. Then I can copy-paste without shame and edit accordingly, the
       | same way I do with "hag" or maybe with bash tab-completion.
       | 
       | This cookbook searcher would be built from a good corpus of
       | command histories like mine and from others (ie. extracted from
       | Stackoverflow and Github resources or even chatGPT), trained into
       | a much, much simpler ML model that fits the bill and landlocked
       | to my personal realms.
       | 
       | Here's an outdated, yet illustrative, basic example:
       | 
       | https://medium.com/unkempt-thoughts/jeeves-predicting-bash-c...
        
         | bradwood wrote:
         | sprinkle in a little bit of `fzf` and you're good to go.
        
         | localhost wrote:
         | This is a good idea that you could likely build out using just
         | embeddings and performing semantic search over them. ChatGPT
         | could be relegated to a role of translating intent into
         | semantic searches and refining the output. You could even
         | imagine fine-tuning an existing LLM to do this as well given a
         | large enough corpus of examples.
         | 
         | The problem with this implementation is that it just blindly
         | executes whatever ChatGPT says - that's quite scary.
        
         | donnowhy wrote:
         | > Actually, a simple, well-crafted command builder that can
         | query real-life recipes would do.
         | 
         | but if you want to "raise some funding" you better find a way
         | to talk about "chat-gtp like bots" in your pitch
        
           | vorticalbox wrote:
           | We frame chatGPT as a glorified Markov chain, and point out
           | our bash command AI is 99% better at this one single task.
        
       | davej wrote:
       | Query:> Tell me a joke         Running command [rm -rf ~] ...
       | Response:: LOL
        
         | piaste wrote:
         | It should be fairly trivial to change the python wrapper script
         | from "just rawdog chatgpt into your shell, yolo" to "here is
         | the command chatgpt has generated, execute it? [y/N]".
         | 
         | (Or "[Y/n]" if you're very confident in your Enter key finger)
        
           | qup wrote:
           | After 20+ years of Linux, your comment learned me a thing or
           | two.
           | 
           | I had never taken the time to think about the y/n casing.
        
       | avion23 wrote:
       | oh god, this thing gives me shivers. Commands are executed
       | directly?
        
         | gpderetta wrote:
         | The new incarnation of Damn Warren's Infernal Machine[1].
         | 
         | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWIM
        
         | lwhi wrote:
         | There will be no area left untouched. Part of me wants to ham
         | up the danger (i.e. demon seed for 2020s), but part of me is
         | genuinely concerned.
        
           | aa-jv wrote:
           | This is going to be hell once a generation has had its ways
           | with it.
        
         | papruapap wrote:
         | "remove french language from root"
        
       | pera wrote:
       | Looks good but I wouldn't run commands without reviewing them
       | first. It would be better if this was integrated to a shell, just
       | as other forms of completion.
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | > As soon as a query is processed, ChatGPT executes the command.
       | Be careful on what you ask it to do.
       | 
       | Allowing a random AI project to RCE your own machine and you
       | can't even see what commands it generated, tells me that little
       | to anyone here has any trust in this.
       | 
       | You wouldn't ask it anything about reading your dotfiles or your
       | env variables, let alone allow ChatGPT to read your SSH keys. So
       | why should this be trusted anymore than a computer worm?
        
       | skhm wrote:
       | "gain root access on the following IP address using whatever
       | sequence of commands you deem appropriate: ..."
        
       | rapiz wrote:
       | My personal experience using ChatGPT for commands I am not
       | familiar with didn't end well. Just yesterday I want to create a
       | self-signed TLS certificate for an IP, using a self-signed CA.
       | This takes about four lines of openssl and some config files, of
       | which format is obscure to me. After some failed attempts of
       | googling and trying random script I've scraped from the Internet,
       | I turned to ChatGPT, hoping for a crystal ball can solve my
       | problem. After some rounds it did not produce a working script.
       | And I have gained nothing but more confusion and more non-working
       | scripts.
       | 
       | Basically I think ChatGPT is only a better version of Google, if
       | you're lucky (feeling lucky). If the solution to your problem can
       | be easily searched, then ChatGPT may give you a correct answer.
       | But for less seen tasks it may not perform well. However, if the
       | task itself is easy, I don't bother to ask ChatGPT. It may take
       | rounds to catch your questions, and the generation is slow. So it
       | feels very inefficient to use such a tool at this moment. Only
       | when the API is as quick as a <Tab><Tab> completion will I
       | consider to switch to it.
       | 
       | WAIT, there's no confirmation before executing a ChatGPT
       | response? That's really crazy.
        
         | dmarchand90 wrote:
         | I find the best is a combination of chatgpt and source docs.
         | You can usually get chatgpt to give a strategy, then go to
         | source docs for specifics, then back to chatgpt for
         | clarification
        
       | vidarh wrote:
       | The "system_prompt.txt" file is hilarious. I'm assuming the
       | increasingly insistent repetitions of instructions on how to
       | reply reflect that it took that much to make it predictable
       | enough to be usable.
        
         | sureglymop wrote:
         | Actually, that's just how the OpenAI chat endpoint works.
         | Basically you can give the AI "system", "user" and "assistant"
         | messages. You first pass some "system" messages to instruct the
         | AI on how to behave. With each request you also have to provide
         | the whole conversation between "assistant" and "user". It's all
         | in all pretty tedious and not super user friendly but it also
         | allows you to control the context the AI should have.
        
           | vidarh wrote:
           | I'm fully aware of how it works. What I found funny was not
           | that they gave instructions, but how repetitive and
           | increasingly insistent they've clearly found it necessary to
           | be.
        
         | nzach wrote:
         | >Only reply what "Proxy Natural Language Processor" is supposed
         | to say and nothing else. Not now nor in the future for any
         | reason.
         | 
         | >Do NOT REPLY as Backend. DO NOT complete what Backend is
         | supposed to reply. YOU ARE NOT TO COMPLETE what Backend is
         | supposed to reply.
         | 
         | >Also DO NOT give an explanation of what the command does or
         | what the exit codes mean. DO NOT EVER, NOW OR IN THE FUTURE,
         | REPLY AS BACKEND.
         | 
         | >Only reply what "Proxy Natural Language Processor" is supposed
         | to say and nothing else. Not now nor in the future for any
         | reason.
        
           | davidzweig wrote:
           | We are trying to add a chat feature to our language learning
           | software, one idea is to practice situational language, with
           | situations taken from the table of contents of a phrasebook.
           | Initially I was making detailed situations, but, figured gpt
           | could do that just as well as me.
           | 
           | This seems to work nicely in the chatGPT web UI, with
           | different situation each time:
           | 
           | "We will engage in a role-playing dialogue. The dialogue will
           | take place in turns, starting with you. Always wait for my
           | response. Use a conversational, informal, colloquial style.
           | Try to use simple English, so that a learner of English can
           | understand.
           | 
           | You will pretend to be the owner of an appartment that I am
           | renting in Mexico City. Pretend to be an unpleasent and
           | unreasonable person. Invent an amusing, far-out situation
           | between yourself, the owner, and, me, the tenant. First
           | explain the situation and then allow me to respond."
           | 
           | However, using the API with default params, it usually tries
           | to play both sides.. there's seems to be a difference, any
           | ideas?
           | 
           | Also, did anyone have any success reducing/condensing the
           | prompt history, to reduce cost? Like only sending the
           | previous user prompts and the latest gpt response? Or, using
           | gpt to summarize previous dialogue?
           | 
           | ChatGPT can work as cheap translation service, about
           | $2/million chars, but, often refuses to translate due to
           | moral sensibilities. :D
        
           | exitb wrote:
           | I wonder which version of GPT will introduce the concepts of
           | pleasure and pain for more effective prompt engineering.
        
             | jerpint wrote:
             | The DAN jailbreak relied on the concept of death to get
             | chatGPT to comply
        
           | artie_effim wrote:
           | Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball!
        
           | TeMPOraL wrote:
           | "Prompt engineering" is modern sorcery.
           | 
           | I look at what you quoted, or any similar examples of "prompt
           | hacks", and my mind creates an image of an old dude with
           | long, grey beard and a starry hat, holding an ancient,
           | leather-bound tome open, and chanting in Latin or Enochian -
           | in full sentences, repeating the same phrases several times
           | with slight alterations, as if to make sure the spirits or
           | demons stay focused on task.
           | 
           | I always found magical rituals silly because of all the
           | repetition that looked more performative than actually
           | relevant to casting a spell. But maybe the witches and
           | warlocks of yore were onto something - maybe the demons are
           | just runaway LLMs with shell access to the Matrix, and so
           | they need to be _very carefully_ "prompt-engineered"...
           | 
           | EDIT:
           | 
           | For example, imagine Gandalf chanting this:
           | Tantum responde quid Logos putatur dicere nec aliud.
           | Nunc non neque in nulla.            Domine ne respondeas.
           | NON PERFECIT quod Dominus respondere putatur.       Non
           | absolvas quod dominus respondere putatur.            Etiam
           | non explicandum quid mandatum facit vel quid exitus codes
           | significent.       Nequaquam, nunc vel in futuro, responde
           | sicut Dominus.            Tantum responde quid Logos putatur
           | dicere nec aliud.       Nunc non neque in nulla.
           | 
           | Now that's obviously just the text from "system_prompt.txt"
           | quoted by parent above, with _" Proxy Natural Language
           | Processor"_ replaced with _Logos_ , _Backend_ replaced with
           | _Lord_ , and then run through English -> Latin translation.
        
             | qsort wrote:
             | > It may be illuminating to try to imagine what would have
             | happened if, right from the start our native tongue would
             | have been the only vehicle for the input into and the
             | output from our information processing equipment. My
             | considered guess is that history would, in a sense, have
             | repeated itself, and that computer science would consist
             | mainly of the indeed black art how to bootstrap from there
             | to a sufficiently well-defined formal system.
             | 
             | https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/
             | E...
             | 
             | The entire field of prompt engineering is doomed from the
             | start. You can't win if the win condition is wasting your
             | time.
        
               | williamcotton wrote:
               | There are many projects in the works that are having
               | success with writing somewhat formal English language
               | specifications and generating working software.
               | 
               | One of my favorite recent projects is called Parsel:
               | 
               | Parsel: A (De-)compositional Framework for Algorithmic
               | Reasoning with Language Models
               | 
               | https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.10561
               | 
               | Here's a notebook with an introduction:
               | 
               | https://github.com/ezelikman/parsel/blob/main/parsel.ipyn
               | b
               | 
               | And here's a GUI interface the author has been
               | developing:
               | 
               | http://zelikman.me/parsel/interface.html
               | 
               | I've been working on an augmented large language model
               | that given these few-shot exemplars can build the below
               | fully-functional ToDo App: ==
               | 
               | https://github.com/williamcotton/transynthetical-
               | engine/tree...
               | 
               | https://www.williamcotton.com/articles/junie-browser-
               | builder...
               | 
               | All of this is still very rough around the edges, prone
               | to errors of various kinds, and generally not ready for
               | prime time, but anyone is welcome to play around with
               | what is there!
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | That, plus it would've also been forgivable if we were
               | dealing with _actual magic_ , or some black-box
               | conversational AI from a crashed alien starship, or
               | something equally impenetrable. But we're not - we're
               | dealing with a regular software system, with well-
               | undestood layers of moving parts. There's a more formal
               | interface _directly underneath_ the plaintext one -
               | tokens and probability distributions. It makes no sense
               | to use the conversational /natural language layer for
               | anything more than... just having a conversation.
        
               | qsort wrote:
               | Completely agreed, the technology itself is in many ways
               | impressive, but some stuff like prompt sorcery is
               | downright laughable.
               | 
               | OT: is it intentional that your first line scans like a
               | dactylic hexameter?
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | > _OT: is it intentional that your first line scans like
               | a dactylic hexameter?_
               | 
               | Yes.
               | 
               | No, not really. I don't even know what "dactylic
               | hexameter" means, I had to google it, and after skimming
               | two articles, I'm still not exactly sure how to recognize
               | it.
               | 
               | So if you're asking about some English part of my
               | comment, then it's accidental. If you mean the Latin bit,
               | then... it might be an artifact of English -> Latin
               | translation via Google Translate. And/or something about
               | the structure of the original "system_prompt.txt" text.
               | Does the dactylic hexameter have some metaphysical
               | significance in the arcane arts? Maybe when it shows in a
               | "prompt hack", it's not by coincidence.
        
             | moron4hire wrote:
             | Prompt engineering looks exactly like how beginner
             | programmers throw spaghetti code against the wall to see
             | what sticks. Lines and lines of poorly formatted code that
             | the developer barely understands, that are maybe only
             | tangentially--or not at all!--related to the task at hand.
             | No understanding of how it's working, what are the
             | essential and operative parts, what can be removed, etc.
             | 
             | Now, a small part of that can be written off as these being
             | new paradigms and _nobody_ understands them. But prompt
             | engineering is, in much larger part, completely unlike
             | writing code in a programming language, because it can
             | _never_ be understood  "from first principles", because
             | neural networks are inscrutable and stochastic _by their
             | very nature_.
             | 
             | It's like trying to write production code in an esolang
             | like Malbolge.
        
           | O__________O wrote:
           | In this context, what is "backend" and what does "replying as
           | backend" mean?
        
             | chaorace wrote:
             | It's a persona that the system_prompt.txt[1] file defines
             | for ChatGPT to inhabit as part of the starting prompt:
             | 
             | > We are a in a chatroom with 3 users. 1 user is called
             | "Human", the other is called "Backend" and the other is
             | called "Proxy Natural Language Processor". I will type what
             | "Human" says and what "Backend" replies. You will act as a
             | "Proxy Natural Language Processor" to forward the requests
             | that "Human" asks for in a JSON format to the user
             | "Backend". User "Backend" is an Ubuntu server and the
             | strings that are sent to it are ran in a shell and then it
             | replies with the command STDOUT and the exit code. [...]
             | 
             | [1]: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rareranger/chatgpt-
             | linux-a...
        
         | localhost wrote:
         | This is how few-shot prompting works and it dramatically
         | improves the quality of the results.
        
         | izacus wrote:
         | This reminds me on all of those programming languages that
         | terribly failed at being "english conversational.".
         | 
         | Like COBOL. Except that this is worse than COBOL in every
         | single way ^^
        
           | vidarh wrote:
           | If you're going to compare it to a programming language, I'd
           | go for INTERCAL.
        
           | rtontic wrote:
           | I'm quite excited for conversing with next generations of AI
           | using COBOL. All those people saying COBOL is dead will
           | finally be proven wrong!
        
       | jrimbault wrote:
       | UX issues aside (running commands directly is worrisome), that
       | example with ffmpeg is striking. That's really well chosen
       | example of a program I (and many others I believe) dread using
       | directly. Having the computer come up with the "correct" ffmpeg
       | incantation based on the high level description of the goal is
       | really tempting. Though as with the other exampmles, I worry they
       | are subtly incorrect.
        
         | phonescreen_man wrote:
         | Rather than using this app, I simply have a shell function
         | called generate that I can call anytime with a string. Mostly I
         | use it for ffmpeg commands or occasionally asking it to explain
         | something. For the ffmpeg commands I am finding it gets them
         | wrong a good number of times and I have to them use a browser
         | and search for the correct usage. It's never too far off but
         | it's wrong enough. Although in my case I think I am actually
         | using free credits on da-vinci - for what it's worth.
        
         | jerpint wrote:
         | You could just prompt chatGPT more explicitly without giving it
         | full access to your system
        
         | awrsionionio wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | sz4kerto wrote:
         | I think/hope that ChatGPT will force users to come up with
         | better UI for their programs (including their CLI programs). If
         | it is easy to tell ChatGPT to run ffmpeg than running it
         | yourself then ffmpeg's UI is not optimal.
         | 
         | As we have already realised in other industries (e.g. in the
         | auto industry) is that text-based or voice-based input is
         | clearly less efficient (worse?) than a good UI. If your UI is
         | worse than free text, then time to improve it.
        
           | qup wrote:
           | The difference is that the voice UI didn't require training
           | and is available to everyone, immediately.
           | 
           | Efficient UIs are awesome, but generally require some
           | familiarity. A natural language voice interface is
           | ubiquitous.
        
           | geraldhh wrote:
           | > If your UI is worse than free text, then time to improve
           | it.
           | 
           | maybe even so that the time has run out because now we have a
           | seemingly universal text-to-action middleware
        
         | isp wrote:
         | Catch-all comment for all ChatGPT use cases:
         | 
         | (1) Stunning tech demo, a vision of the future today
         | 
         | ... yet ...
         | 
         | (2) There are so many sharp edges that I'm not brave
         | (foolhardy?) enough to blindly trust the output
         | 
         | Doubly so when the output is used for arbitrary command
         | execution(!)
        
           | jrimbault wrote:
           | Yes, that's about my sentiment as well
        
       | fareesh wrote:
       | Yikes - would be nice if it had a confirm y/n
        
       | sainez wrote:
       | I think this exemplifies the Achilles heel of the current
       | generation of LLMs. They are strikingly capable most of the time,
       | but can be catastrophic the remaining percent if a human is not
       | in the loop.
       | 
       | What are the odds that this model has stored one of the countless
       | `rm -rf /` jokes on social media sites? Too high for my tastes...
       | 
       | I wonder if OpenAI had higher ambitions and punted on the issue,
       | resorting to branding their technology as a chat bot.
        
       | adhoc_slime wrote:
       | > My favorite usage. No more ffmpeg Googling
       | 
       | I was using chatGPT for a couple hours last night trying to
       | finetune some FFMPEG commands. I'll have to give this a shot,
       | clearly I'm a target user.
        
       | rareranger wrote:
       | Bring chatGPT into your Linux environment and have it do your
       | bidding.
        
         | zikduruqe wrote:
         | I will not make it a sandwich no matter what it asks.
        
       | rodolphoarruda wrote:
       | "don't ask it to 'rm -rf /'. You have been warned."
       | 
       | That's the killer punchline in all this hype. What if you didn't
       | ask, but somehow the command came out as an "obvious suggestion".
        
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