[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?
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Ask HN: Is prompt engineering just snake oil?
Is prompt engineering a snake oil? The engineering, as the word
stands so far in history is about observing clear limitations and
capabilities of something and then "engineering" things around it
such as "engineering a compiler" is all about knowing the
underlying processor, memory and other characteristics and then
engineering a solution that converts a text notation to a stream of
instructions that try to strike a balanced tradeoff. But with
LLMs, no one knows their workings once they are trained. The other
day, Bark model[0] for text to speech, the team itself has
following to say on details: > Below is a list of some known non-
speech sounds, but we are finding more every day. Please let us
know if you find patterns that work particularly well on Discord!
[laughter], [laughs], [sighs].... So that's the team themselves
not knowing what their model is capable of then how come prompt
engineering is any engineering at all? [0]
https://github.com/suno-ai/bark
Author : wg0
Score : 152 points
Date : 2023-04-22 10:46 UTC (12 hours ago)
| gwd wrote:
| One definition of "engineer" is "to plan or do something in a
| skillful way:". Example: "The administration engineered a
| compromise."
|
| I'd say even in this example, there's more a sense of searching
| through a range of different options to achieve specific
| properties. This is the sense of "prompt engineering": you use
| skills to create prompts -- in part by searching through various
| alternatives -- that have specific properties.
|
| [1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/engineer
| dbavaria wrote:
| It seems akin to SEO experts identifying as engineers. Can we
| just call them experts or wizards if they want to be fantastical.
| wwilim wrote:
| Prompt wrangling, prompt whispering?
| nanidin wrote:
| > Below is a list of some known non-speech sounds, but we are
| finding more every day. Please let us know if you find patterns
| that work particularly well on Discord! [laughter], [laughs],
| [sighs]....
|
| This is likely a reflection of the data used to train the model -
| TTS models are trained on labeled audio, one form of which is
| subtitled audio streams. In subtitles / closed captioning,
| bracketed words are frequently used when there is something
| audible that is not speech.
|
| Based on this insight, it should be possible to inspect the
| training data and extract a set of non-speech sounds the model is
| likely to generate well - but that doesn't drive engagement of
| your users like asking them to experiment themselves does ;)
|
| For example, closed captioning adds music notes () when music
| plays or when people sing. According to the Bark docs, adding
| causes the model to output things as music.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Software engineering is also snake-oil.
|
| Yes, software _can_ be engineered, but that 's not what the vast
| majority of so-called software engineers are actually doing at
| their jobs. The title mostly exists to inflate the importance of
| a programmer with years of experience under their belt. In
| reality, most of them couldn't explain to you what engineering
| itself is, and their job primarily consists of duct-taping and
| building features expediently. It's like taking a carpenter whose
| job is to crank out barely adequate sheds for a shed company and
| calling them an architect.
|
| Don't even get me started on "computer science."
|
| Prompt engineering is a legitimate area of study, and is
| obviously a practice demanded by LLMs, but you gotta just ignore
| the "engineering" part. It's the same skill as being a good
| communicator. Take a room full of "software engineers", tell them
| "build me an app that will let me sell gadgets", and they'll do
| their best to build one, but chances are it won't do what you
| want unless you communicate with greater specificity. It's
| hilarious how many people think LLMs suck just because they don't
| do the right thing given a single shitty sentence.
| arroz wrote:
| What's your beef with computer science?
| [deleted]
| intelVISA wrote:
| Most SWE is snake oil, take one look around and you'll see what
| I mean...
|
| React..? Golang? GUIs?! We stepped too far from The Truth (vim,
| ghc) and now we are all Oilers.
| hnfong wrote:
| SWE snake oil is like "Extreme Programming", "whiteboard
| interviews", "design patterns", "microservice
| architecture"...
| intelVISA wrote:
| You just know you're in a Bad Shop when you see "unit
| tests" come out the bag...
| rvz wrote:
| Yes.
|
| > So that's the team themselves not knowing what their model is
| capable of then how come prompt engineering is any engineering at
| all?
|
| This is why.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| It's snake oil as soon as someone starts using the term
| unironically, which I haven't personally observed.
| wruza wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35642665
| oneplane wrote:
| In essence it's all about getting results, and specialisation
| might yield better results. Just because people think it sounds
| cool to call it 'prompt engineering' doesn't mean it's not a
| specialisation (or optimisation), even if the terminology is
| based on nothing.
|
| I do think that it's not broad or deep enough (right now) to
| merit a completely separate area of expertise on its own, but it
| can be too big to fit within the minds and areas of expertise of
| people who already have their work cut out for them in their
| existing workdays. Think about most desktop computer users, they
| really have no clue how the computer works, and even asking them
| to change a resolution on a mirrored display might be too far
| removed from their knowledge base (and that is fine). This also
| applies to tokenisation prompt inputs; it might take too much for
| someone to simply tack that on to what they already do and know.
|
| This is then were we get job postings and those need to be easily
| identified, so people can search for them, and this is where we
| get nonsense terms used to distinguish the desired applicants
| from the pool of work-seeking people.
| iamwil wrote:
| Think of it more as "prompt-fu", akin to "google-fu"--or how to
| google. You do have to know how to talk to an LLM, and it will be
| important. But it's not so much engineering, as we come to think
| of it in software traditionally. I wouldn't get hung up on the
| name, but just see it for what it is--a bad name for something
| we'll need to learn to be effective. It won't go away entirely,
| but will be mitigated to be less important as LLMs and AI get
| better.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| LLMs are very quirky. They need the correct context to produce
| something good and it's often surprising what that needed
| context is. OP just play around with midjourney and you'll soon
| realize that it is a very real thing
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| 100%. People who have not tried to interact with these models
| don't understand there is actually quite a lot of skill in
| navigating the latent space.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| It really should be just an intermediate phase. Proper,
| solid control system must be created. First you have Stable
| Diffusion, then you create ControlNet - and this as just a
| beginning.
|
| This is also one of the reasons why the problem of
| transparency ("but why and how does it work?") is so
| important in Machine Learning: allowing control.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Somethings will be easier, but it's still a lot like
| programming. You often need to do a lot of setup to
| accomplish a task. For somethings, there's just no way
| around creating a specific context.
|
| In many ways, it's the difference between using a library
| like lodash and writing the methods yourself. You still
| need to understand what's being done, a library just
| handles more things automatically for you.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Adding a working control system doesn't take away the
| fact it requires skill though.
|
| It seems like people think that one day they will be able
| to give a vague prompt and generate exactly what they
| were looking for, which I don't believe will ever happen.
| It feels like there will always be some skill in
| navigating the model.
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| If by "some skill" you mean the basic ability to type
| vaguely coherent English, than I agree.
|
| If anything the recent generative art advancements coming
| out (Firefly, MJ v5) would seem to refute your point.
| There was a time when diffusion models require some level
| of knowledge and skill to use. To get high quality
| output, it was in your best interest to learn about the
| different types of samplers, upscalers, hyper networks,
| textual inversions, understanding denoising etc. etc.
|
| Now? I'd say the millions of active users on MJ would
| seem to prove you wrong.
|
| As far as language models like GPT, we've already seen
| the average level of skill needed come down with each
| successive release, ChatGPT is easier to use than GPT-3
| which is easier to use than GPT-2.
|
| Furthermore, devs in the space (Stability, OpenAI, etc)
| could refine/train pre-processing LLM models that
| transform more accessible amateur prompts to more
| professional prompts at real-time.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I've used MJ quite a lot. It's easy to create
| _something_. It 's quite difficult to create a specific
| thing.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _there will always be some skill_
|
| There is a world of difference between the needs in
| governance in just having to write "Those decorations
| where I marked the area, make them a bit more Hans
| Holbein as opposed to Klimt", compared to knowing
| patching tricks so that if you asked the engine to draw a
| 'T' you were not being served a 'B'.
|
| This latter example - ask 'B', get 'T' - I have seen from
| Midjourney only a few hours ago, in the public showcase.
| I have examined several prompts and results, and very
| often they do not overlap but very partially - the engine
| is like a wild horse.
|
| That this is not intrinsic, but just a current stage, is
| only part of the story: the user will want to have a tool
| that allows the production of what the artist had exactly
| in mind (not just "anything nice as /inspired/ by our
| suggestions"). It is the normal form of the product in
| its "ready for shipment" state.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I disagree it will ever be that easy for people to
| generate specifically what they're looking for.
|
| I believe there will always be some amount of navigation
| of the latent space required, and people who don't
| understand how to navigate it will struggle.
|
| To use your analogy, even if the horse is tame you still
| need to know how to ride it.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _that easy_
|
| Can you code? Can you illustrate? Can you build? Piece by
| piece, you sketch, implement, hone, finetune, improve,
| correct, retry, go into detail, expand... The ease of the
| process is relative to the tools adopted.
|
| Of course there has to be knowledge behind it. Of course
| you have to know your tools. But "wild horse" and
| "diligent consultant", axe and scalpel require different
| degrees areas and modalities of competence.
|
| A well built tool will build on the competences already
| natural for the professional (e.g. a graphic designer
| will be able to sketch and to instruct the machine in a
| reasonably standard language). Of course the better you
| know your tool, the greater the effectiveness. But
| currently, the systems can be strongly unreliable - they
| do not respect the request.
|
| The user will have to learn to deal with a machine taking
| natural language as an input just like any manager has to
| know how to speak to personnel to obtain what is wanted.
| On the other hand, the implementation of "virtual
| personnel" which is reliable is a responsibility of the
| tool developers.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| My point is that even with improved tooling I don't think
| it will be accessible to a layman. You will need to
| develop some skill to wield the tool.
|
| It seems like you agree based on parts of your comment
| like "A well built tool will build on the competences
| already natural for the professional".
| [deleted]
| rasz wrote:
| Just like you wouldnt be able to drive, let alone start
| Ford T.
| [deleted]
| Ekaros wrote:
| Specially with image generation and like I can believe that
| there is certain amount of learning and practise to get exactly
| the results you want and how different inputs affect output.
| And then also picking up right model for right job.
|
| Not that it is engineering, but there is lot of uses where it
| doesn't match either...
| bank6062 wrote:
| Prompt engineering has been fascinating to follow at my job.
| People believe that they will be using "prompt engineering" as
| a new way to verbally interact with peers. As if they now have
| found the Rosetta stone for their own quirks.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Next you're going to say social engineering isn't real
| engineering :P
| didgeoridoo wrote:
| I'm saving this one, thanks.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| A great example of this hit me last week when a demo for
| prompting pixel art pointed out you need to date the video game
| you're referencing. You might know you want "final fantasy 6
| pixel art style" but there are many remakes of it.
| yarg wrote:
| Probably closer to SEO.
|
| Works for the time being while there's low hanging fruit, but
| researchers will use those exploits to help build more robust
| systems.
|
| Eventually there'll be no point in doing it anymore.
| screye wrote:
| Prompt engineering is an 'oil' alright. It's a lubricant to make
| models work better.
|
| The idea of engineering being backed by solid mathematical
| understanding is a relatively post-calculus idea. For the longest
| time, we built bridges a certain way, because those are the
| bridges that stood. We were flying planes long before we
| understood flight.
|
| At the end of the day, engineering is the cycle of "identify a
| pain point -> launch experiments -> observe the delta -> apply
| the solution". Prompt engineering meets all of those requirements
| and therefore, is engineering.
|
| It is funny to hear this, because 20 years ago : "is software
| engineering really engineering" was a rather common phrase around
| STEM circles.
| iandanforth wrote:
| "We were flying planes long before we understood flight."
|
| This isn't true. Sir George Cayley elucidated several
| aerodynamic principles significantly in advance of the Wright
| Brothers first flights. The Wrights took advantage of this
| knowledge in designing their propellers and planes. We have
| since learned a lot _more_ about how flight works, but the
| guiding principles of lift, drag, and thrust predate the
| mechanical engineering to realize a heavier than air aircraft.
| cvg wrote:
| I like this framing by Michael Hashimoto, on Prompt Engineering:
|
| https://mitchellh.com/writing/prompt-engineering-vs-blind-pr...
|
| Most of what we see on Twitter or YouTube is Blind Prompting.
| However, it is possible to apply an engineering mindset to
| prompting and that is what we should call prompt engineering.
| Check out the article for a much more detailed framing.
|
| Dair AI also has some nice info and resources ( with academic
| papers) about prompt engineering.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Prompt testing, especially when for q/a pairs where there are
| multiple right answers, has been bugging me a lot
|
| The article is reasonable, but also shows a big gap in tooling,
| as the techniques there feel closer to linting & typing then
| testing once you do more interesting prompts. They don't check
| the interesting parts..
| than3 wrote:
| > The article seems reasonable but ... closer to linting then
| testing... they don't check the interesting parts
|
| can you elaborate a bit more on what those interesting parts
| are?
|
| It could just be a limitation of computation.
| cjbprime wrote:
| It's okay; software engineering isn't real either.
|
| (In many countries, the word "engineer" is regulated -- you can't
| call yourself an engineer without professional qualifications and
| oversight.)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_...
| agentultra wrote:
| Yes it is. It's a protected term in Canada and they have
| software engineers.
| cjbprime wrote:
| Are you saying that software engineers in Canada are P. Eng
| licensed?
|
| (If not, then your example is one where software engineers
| are misusing the protected term, but as they usually do not
| set up shop and mislead the general public into thinking they
| are certified, which would be the activity the protection is
| designed to thwart, the protection is rarely enforced.)
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Are you saying that software engineers in Canada are P.
| Eng licensed?
|
| That's my understanding. They don't have a PE exam like
| here in the US. To be P. Eng licensed, they have to
| graduate from an accredited engineering program and
| register with some board. And they do have Software
| Engineering programs (I know; I hired folks from these).
| odiroot wrote:
| Or you get a diploma for that, and you are a bona fide
| engineer.
| throw22423 wrote:
| [dead]
| Ekaros wrote:
| I believe that there can be real software engineering. And in
| many places it has uses.
|
| But how most of the sotfware done, is not really engineered.
|
| And I think we might do better if we were more rigorous with
| what is being build, probably slower, but better off and lot of
| it could be replicated for close enough use cases.
| ozim wrote:
| Isn't real?
|
| You write about people who sling PHP or Javascript spaghetti?
|
| I have engineering degree in computer science (I think it is
| mostly thing in eastern Europe, you have bunch of electronics,
| math, computer architecture to learn), I worked on automotive
| software which is I have to say fairly regulated. Where you
| have to care for things like ISO or MISRA standards in your
| code.
|
| I don't mind people calling themselves "software engineer" even
| if they whip up front-end - but I do mind if someone calls
| "software engineering isn't real".
|
| ;)
| nodemaker wrote:
| Changing a bunch of bits on a magnetic drive or another media
| is not like building an airplane that flies or a car that
| runs! Software engineering is closer to a priest that
| supposedly can communicate to god than it is to someone that
| builds a car!
|
| I have a CS degree too and people without it are sometimes
| much better than me at slinging code
|
| Actually forget people, you should realize how far this is
| from engineering when ChatGPT can do it better than me :) Ask
| ChatGPT to build a car though and we will see how far it
| gets.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >on a magnetic drive or another media is not like building
| an airplane that flies or a car that runs
|
| I ain't sure what century you live in, but it's not the
| current one...
|
| If I program some bits on my hard drive and now a stepper
| motor punches thought the side of the mount its bolted too.
| Or if I say "set the flaps to this pitch in this condition"
| and that doesn't happen, then something very real, and very
| bad, happens in the reality we both exist in.
|
| Almost everything complicated that exists today uses
| electronic control in one way or another. Screwing up the
| software in that ECU is just as much as of an error as
| using the wrong metal in its manufacture.
| criddell wrote:
| In some jurisdictions, Professional Engineer (P.E.) is a
| protected title just like Doctor of Medicine (M.D.). You are
| licensed and can be sued for malpractice and lose your
| license to practice.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Within a lot of projects, before starting to code, quite some
| engineering needs to be done. Engineering is making first
| models that mock reality, trying them, refining them, making
| them more performant and so on. To me the title 'software
| engineer' summerize these skills nicely.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| An engineer is generally liable for what they sign off on.
| Software engineering isn't anything like that and all products
| are filled with legalese to restrict liability.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > all products are filled with legalese to restrict
| liability.
|
| This doesn't seem to apply in the realm I've been working in.
| We've had to do the exact opposite thing.
|
| In small, B2B software companies you may find that accepting
| an uncomfortable amount of liability is usually the only way
| to get your foot in the door. Certain promises have to be
| made (very carefully!) or no business would occur at all.
|
| For example, if we told our banking clients that "if your
| front-line app crashes we might have it fixed in 5-7 days"
| _just to be safe_ , they likely would have little-to-no
| interest in utilizing our solution. We have to say things
| like "We will respond within 1 hour and send a polite apology
| letter to your CTO every time the server makes a weird
| noise". And, we have to "engineer" our solution so that we
| have a minuscule chance of hitting that promised target.
|
| Consider that in a <10 person company that there is going to
| effectively be _some_ person who has to own all of the pain
| that comes along with these decision. Is that person not an
| "engineer" by some arbitrary definition? Sure. But, for the
| purposes of "a professional weighing all of the pros/cons and
| making a decision that they intend to accept all consequences
| for" - I think it's the same effective practice.
|
| Ultimately, "software engineering" is a very broad space with
| varying degrees of professionalism. At some ends, you will
| find things that approximate actual engineering. At others,
| you will find things that appear more academic or artistic.
| The context is what defines the title of "engineer" for me.
| cjbprime wrote:
| This is a contractual SLA, which is certainly not the same
| thing as legal liability, and your contract might
| (obviously I haven't seen it) shield yourself from
| financial liability on top of your lack of legal liability.
| (Saying that you will respond within one hour is not the
| same thing as saying that they can sue you for every hour
| you're down.)
| rat9988 wrote:
| "B2B software companies you may find that accepting an
| uncomfortable amount of liability is usually the only way
| to get your foot in the door"
|
| The company would have to accept it. No legal trouble for
| the developper.
| psychlops wrote:
| I don't think a country charging fees to bless a word makes a
| profession more or less real.
| coldtea wrote:
| It does however give it better control, a fixed threshold in
| terms of training that applicants should pass, and more
| oversight.
|
| Those are the important parts, being real or not is
| irrelevant. Snake-oil selling is also a very real profession.
| thegginthesky wrote:
| Truth to be told, Engineering license requirements have a
| bigger effect in gate keeping the profession and keep
| supply restricted, much like any other regulated
| profession. Gate keeping has some benefits, but is easily
| circumvented by bad actors all the time, such as all the
| sham degrees that just churn out the bare minimum to pass
| licensing tests.
|
| If all the licensing to architects, doctors, engineers,
| lawyers, and so on, really had a big impact on quality, the
| world we live in would be very different and better. But
| that doesn't happen because licensing a profession only
| works if quality is upheld on all steps of the professional
| education chain.
|
| A lot of software companies circumvent all of these
| downsides of bad quality in education by raising the bar on
| the hiring pipeline with a bunch of tests and so on. Does
| it always work? No, just like licensing doesn't. But at
| least it keep la the profession accessible to those who are
| willing to study algorithms, data structures and so on.
|
| There's no perfect system in our world, but I am glad we
| don't have license requirements to develop software. I am a
| statistician that became a dev through self studying,
| training and learning on the job, and I also know many
| others (even real engineers) that turned to this profession
| without graduating in the field and contribute a ton with
| their specific background knowledge.
|
| Should everyone be called engineers? Probably not as it
| will elude to licensing the profession, but not calling
| yourself one decreases chances of finding another job
| dramatically.
|
| A true tragedy tbh, I'd rather if everyone called
| themselves devs, scientists or something less loaded than
| engineer.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _Gate keeping has some benefits, but is easily
| circumvented by bad actors all the time, such as all the
| sham degrees that just churn out the bare minimum to pass
| licensing tests._
|
| Depends on the country and the educational system. In
| some countries no such sham degree is possible to be
| accepted for an engineering title.
| thegginthesky wrote:
| I have yet to see a country where licensing equates to
| high quality in all the services. The examples I've used
| might not work in some places, but people find flaws in
| licensing systems all the time.
|
| Sometimes licensing is so strict that things get done
| anyways ignoring license requirements because there is
| way more demand for some services than the supply of
| licensed professionals. In such cases, there are so many
| people violating regulation that policing becomes
| ineffective. It's the case with some Latin American
| countries.
|
| And then you get to the problem that the license is
| ineffective and doesn't add to anything.
|
| There's no perfect system to uphold quality of labor
| across a profession, we pick our poison and deal with it.
| Veen wrote:
| You should rethink that whenever you drive under a bridge or
| get on a boat. The reason they collapse or sink so
| infrequently is largely because engineers are accredited and
| held responsible.
| throw22423 wrote:
| [dead]
| taeric wrote:
| Causality will be tough here. I could also credit the
| certification regulations just as much. And truth to tell,
| construction techniques are vital, yet we don't value the
| construction workers in this way.
|
| That is, it is a whole system. And largely comes to costs
| and known building techniques. After all, certified
| engineers built "galloping gerdy."
|
| (And I didn't even get into maintenance costs and
| application. )
| ulrashida wrote:
| Construction techniques are vital, but a civil engineer
| is employed to conduct the correct QA/QC on those
| techniques.
|
| This doesn't devalue the effort of the work crew, but it
| does recognize you need accredited professionals at
| certain parts of the process to ensure public safety.
|
| To be a bit more pointed: causality isn't difficult here.
| This legislation and professional practice was
| deliberately designed as a result of the numerous
| failures observed throughout the 1900s. The cause:
| multiple fatalities and unreliable infrastructure let to
| the regulation of the engineering profession. The effect:
| we are safer.
| taeric wrote:
| My point is that it is all of the regulation involved.
| Not just the single line worker that is the civil
| engineer. I know more than a few of those folks, and they
| are not some magical being. And it is more than the civil
| engineer. It is also the auditor. The inspector. Even the
| manager making sure they are all working together.
| wg0 wrote:
| I personally do not think Software engineering is a thing.
| There are opinions on how to structure Software even within
| same language and framework and there's little objective
| procedure to rate one way better that the other and there's
| one, that kind of performance gains usually are negligible.
|
| But prompt engineering? Based on what knowledge exactly?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Software engineering is definitely a thing. There are
| numerous ways to code robustly and to prove the software will
| do what it's supposed to. They're much used in mission-
| critical applications where failure is a Very Bad Thing.
|
| But most developers do none of these things, and many
| developers don't even know they exist.
|
| But prompt engineering is just search++. You might save some
| time if you know a little about the underlying technology,
| and there's an element of creativity which is unusual for
| search.
|
| But it's still not rocket surgery.
| prisonguard wrote:
| > But most developers do none of these things
|
| When they should, failure cost time/money
| kahrl wrote:
| Are you saying the definition of engineering means there is
| only one correct way to do things? What is this comment even
| trying to say?
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| In Canada, it's a licensed profession
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > It's okay; software engineering isn't real either.
|
| > (In many countries, the word "engineer" is regulated -- you
| can't call yourself an engineer without professional
| qualifications and oversight.)
|
| Those countries (at least France, Switzerland and Canada at
| least) also have official accredited Software Engineering
| degrees.
|
| I know because I hired people who graduated from these
| programs!
| jeffrallen wrote:
| And in Canada, if you call yourself an engineer, you wear an
| iron ring to remember your responsibility to society.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring
| foogazi wrote:
| When a building collapses you can't just reboot it
|
| But in software you can simulate and test all you want before
| connecting it to the real world
| zerr wrote:
| To be fair, when the building collapses in the CAD
| simulation, you just "reboot" it with different parameters.
| Civil engineers don't actually put bricks or weld a metal.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Problem is that CAD is just an approximation of the real
| world and will never simulate it 100% faithfully.
|
| Software on the other hand can technically be simulated
| 100% accurately, barring hardware or interpreter bugs.
| kaba0 wrote:
| No amount of testing will prevent all errors, and certain
| bugs can cost human lives.
| taeric wrote:
| This always depends on context. And often the results aren't as
| good as you think it will be. Sets up an obvious target for
| regulatory capture and can stagnate things.
|
| I say all of this as a pro regulation person.
| awill88 wrote:
| Engineering is a practice. Like medicine, but we're building
| machines that run in a virtual space. We architect and build
| houses in our minds. We send those projects to production to
| make the business money.
|
| That's engineering.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Eh yes and no. "Traditional" engineering professions, ones
| where you need to get licensed, are all grounded in physics.
| Software engineering isn't (ignore the fact that bits running
| on silicon is physics, it's irrelevant). Software engineering
| is based on best practices and algorithms that are based
| on...some guy writing them, saying they're good, and others
| trusting that they're good. There's a million different ways
| to make something. Million different opinions. Million
| different cargo cults. It's why making a FE exam for software
| would be impossible; there's just too many ways to do
| something and often very little evidence _why_ it 's good.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Engineering = Applied Physics.
|
| Software Engineering = Applied Math.
|
| Both are about modelling, so you have a good idea if a
| solution works before you build it.
|
| If you're gluing stuff together and hoping it's not going
| to fall apart _too_ often you 're not doing either.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| And the last piece of the equation:
|
| Applied Physics = Applied Math.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| _If you 're gluing stuff together and hoping it's not
| going to fall apart too often you're not doing either. _
|
| That's precisely what the majority of "software
| engineers" are doing nowadays. That's what web
| development is. Those that are creating tools other
| developers use and build things using algorithms/data
| structures in novel ways (essentially applied math as you
| said), they are the real software engineers in my eyes.
| mablopoule wrote:
| "There's a million different ways to make something.
| Million different opinions. Million different cargo cults."
|
| So... different tradeoff? Sounds like engineering to me :).
| mablopoule wrote:
| You can absolutely be a "software engineer" in the legal sense,
| just not in the US.
|
| Here in France, the engineer diploma is a regulated thing, and
| there absolutely are software-centered engineering school who
| are accredited to deliver it, which is how I got mine.
|
| It's in the "Grandes ecoles" cursus, which usually follows a
| more classical STEM-centric cursus called "classes prepa".
|
| As to whether "Software engineering" is a real thing, well on
| one hand most of it isn't very process-oriented, on the other
| hand there are such thing as ISO certification for software
| security, so it's less the individual which is regulated than
| it is the project in itself when it matters (like critical
| data-center, or handling of medical data), so it's not like
| there aren't any regulatory framework in the software world.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > As to whether "Software engineering" is a real thing, well
| in one hand most of it isn't very process-oriented,
|
| Part of the reason for that is the cost of iteration is much
| lower. So software engineers can afford having less rigorous
| process. And the tooling is getting better, with formal
| specification languages, type systems and static analyzer.
|
| Rapid prototyping, microcontrollers and simulation tools
| brought some of the same possibilities in mechanical &
| electrical engineering. Even the traditionally very
| conservative space industry is embracing faster iteration
| cycles (at least, SpaceX is).
|
| "Software on a microcontroller isn't engineering, it's just
| coding, but replace said software by TTL chips and PROMs and
| suddenly it's EE".
| voidhorse wrote:
| Yeah, pretty much this. Only a subset of the actual activity
| that falls under the umbrella of "software engineering" could
| be called engineering in the traditional sense.
|
| The engineers working on aviation software and other low-level,
| real-time, performance critical systems probably need to use
| quite a bit of maths and are closest to doing what we
| traditionally consider engineering.
|
| All those teams working on web apps and advertising...yeah not
| really. This isn't to say what they do isn't complicated or
| difficult, but it's not really engineering in the classical
| sense insofar as it doesn't (typically) require the use of
| continuous mathematics and deep systems theory. If you're
| primarily writing systems design docs and performing
| calculations, you're probably doing some kind of engineering.
| If you're mostly writing code to spec you're just programming.
| It's sort of akin to a carpenter calling themselves an
| engineer.
|
| But hey, this is all symptomatic of a general trend here in the
| states of the trivialization and devaluing of expertise; people
| think it's fair to identify as whatever their heart desires
| regardless of qualification, knowledge, or experience. A world
| in which people regularly accept advice from total randos on
| social media is not one that has any strong sense of value
| around knowledge or critical capacity.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Lol yes, the people writing spaghetti code at boeing are real
| engineers and the people writing complex distributed systems
| at Google aren't.
| jcfrei wrote:
| Thanks for reminding us that there are only a few real
| engineering professions. Reminds me of the Hemingway quote
| that there only three real sports: Motorracing,
| mountaineering and bull fighting - the rest are just games.
|
| No seriously that kind of gate keeping is just ridiculous.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| I refer to myself as a software developer, but also intensely
| dislike the gatekeeping around the term "engineer".
| silisili wrote:
| I call myself a programmer. Nothing more, nothing less.
| While I don't necessarily go out of my way to gatekeep, I
| find 'engineer' pretty cringy, and 'architect' makes my
| eyes roll out of my head.
|
| What's next, Software Physician?
| throwaway675309 wrote:
| I disagree, maybe if the software industry self regulated
| like more traditional forms of engineering such as
| mechanical and electrical, we could guarantee some minimal
| level of competency in the field and wouldn't have to
| resort to weeklong interview processes and hours and hours
| of leetcode and whiteboarding.
|
| With all due respect, if your "engineering title" is
| preceded by the word salesforce or prompt, you're not an
| engineer.
| turtleyacht wrote:
| It's only after these works that I've found "engineering"
| is worth a _little_ gatekeeping: * The New
| Plague * Have Fun at Work * Friends in High
| Places * Design for Prevention
|
| In short, some cynicism is warranted, but not complete and
| utter disillusionment.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| in aviation, engineering is basically trying to get 5-6 sigma
| safety
| james-revisoai wrote:
| Prompt engineering made more sense before RLHF/instruct models.
|
| Back then text just continued onwards, and many papers found
| ridiculous gains on conforming with intended output (and
| therefore properties of output) by finding a suitable widespread
| online format.
|
| Example: I think all Question/Answer forums, and places like
| StackOverflow, used a certain format like 'Q:' - that worked much
| better for question content with high quality answers. One paper,
| "Ask me anything" showed that formulating tasks as questions-
| answers resulted in much more effective prompts:
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.02441 - another for reasoning is the
| "Lets think things through step by step" example. It was a
| challenge to output JSON data with more than 3 correct keys,
| unless you finetuned.
|
| However, the instruct models and recent 3.5/conversational RLHF
| are just so good at doing tasks, that such "engineering" - which
| supported/improved a wide base of prompts across domains and
| functionalities - broadly entirely stopped.
|
| Now prompt engineering sounds so cool and was also used in the
| way of specific use cases back then, that everybody uses the term
| for prompts to get certain outputs. This however, is not really
| the same level of engineering and to some expert, reminiscent of
| old-school knowledge system finesse, that we saw before 2022.
| meltyness wrote:
| Yes, we would all prefer "philosopher of corpus-linguistic
| preference membranes, and domain-specific knowledge manager"
| because it's more precise, and doesn't trample on my
| position/salary/pedigree.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| It's not a durable skill. A year after learning to give perfect
| prompts for your favourite ai, the mode will get updated and
| you'll have to learn it all again
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
| slowhadoken wrote:
| Calling yourself a Prompt Engineer makes me think you don't know
| college math and computer science. Prompt Engineer sounds like a
| Subway employee calling themselves a sandwich artist.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Welcome to Clown World! Where things that should not be are,
| and things that should are not. I first noticed CW when someone
| reached out to me during COVID and their title was
| "Professional LinkedIn Specialist". In hindsight, it was
| probably when people were making gobs of funny money from
| running their GPU 24x7
|
| My advice? Don't fight it, accept it and embrace the change.
| Don't sell yourself short, you only need to put in like 3
| months of work to earn that Principal Prompt Engineer title!
| notatoad wrote:
| wait, people are talking about prompt engineering like an actual
| thing?
|
| it's not snake oil, it's literally just a joke.
| amonith wrote:
| already a thing in Poland:
|
| https://www.pracuj.pl/praca/prompt-engineer-warszawa-czernia...
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Yes. It requires much less engineering than a Google Search, and
| there are no Google Search Engineers.
| netdur wrote:
| I have seen people doing multi steps prompting SD to get exact
| image they wants, that includes textual inversion, merging
| models, creating lora, manipulate prompt weights, in/out
| painting, this is a serious job like graphic designer but with
| less imagination and more wizarding, now SD created open source
| LLM, I expect the same to happen
| _throwawayaway wrote:
| I just see it as proper thinking, but yeah prompt engineering
| sounds more catchy.
| eternalban wrote:
| The "engineering" aspect will rear its head one fine day when
| company A, that has bet the house on 'prompt engineering' their
| service or product, resorts to panicked uttering of LLM chants,
| spells, and whatnot, to make a misbehaving model work again.
|
| But that it's a bit further down the line. Today, like previous
| hype cycles, opportunistic types will cash out on the money
| train. And tomorrow you will do whiteboard interviews for them
| (just like the last cycles..)
|
| So the relevant question for the thoughtful geek isn't "Is
| crafting prompts engineering?". No. The Q is "should I sit out
| this hype cycle and then end up doing leet code monkey dance for
| the opportunistic types who made it big by riding the hype cycle,
| yet again?"
| [deleted]
| wodenokoto wrote:
| I've always considered it was engineering in the "social
| engineering " sense of the word
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| Unity has "customer support engineers" iirc. The USA misuses the
| term endlessly
| than3 wrote:
| > The USA misuses the term endlessly
|
| Well most of corporate america certainly does, but they can
| just as easily be multinationals so its not really the USA
| other than they may have registered the entity here.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| In general, any product or service that makes exaggerated or
| false claims of effectiveness without providing concrete evidence
| to support those claims could be considered a form of "snake
| oil."
|
| Just because we don't know all the workings of something doesn't
| mean we can't effectively use it, or measure how well that
| approach of use is valuable or repeatable for similar uses.
|
| For example, while we have a good understanding of the basic
| principles of magnetism, there is still much that we do not fully
| understand about how magnets work, and ongoing research is
| focused on unraveling these mysteries and expanding our
| understanding of this fascinating natural phenomenon.
|
| That's not to say we don't know how to use magnets to make sound,
| however.
|
| Prompt engineering, in my opinion, is a process of optimized
| querying of a frozen model. The approach can be augmented by
| using "hot" data from vector databases or other types of text
| storage engines. The approach to picking the right content for
| prompt building is not "snake oil", but based on well known
| processes including autocomplete, synonyms and related terms,
| personalization, and query expansion.
| taeric wrote:
| Notable to remember that snake oil actually had use. It was
| everything getting labeled as such that caused problems.
|
| Probably makes it an apt comparison, all told. :)
| amelius wrote:
| I think alchemy is a better word.
|
| Anyway, if you're trying things iteratively it becomes more a
| science. Engineering is more like designing stuff and building
| them without trying lots of things first.
| than3 wrote:
| I believe the words you are looking for would be, it becomes
| more a science when you attempt to reduce to first principles
| (which happens iteratively but not necessarily the other way
| around).
|
| Engineering takes a first-principled approach, where upon
| knowing those principles you can then construct abstractly
| without physically building first.
| docandrew wrote:
| It's "engineering" the same way we joke about "social
| engineering." Both are ways of using language to subtly
| manipulate another. But the term should be understood as tongue-
| in-cheek and I'd run from anyone trying to sell you something to
| do with it.
| broast wrote:
| Prompt engineering is just communication skills. I could tell you
| which of my coworkers would make good or bad prompt engineers
| just by looking at their transfer notes on tickets.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Is this just about gatekeeping the word 'engineer', so that its
| purity isn't tarnished? I know that software engineers were
| scoffed at by electrical engineers, who I bet were scoffed at by
| mechanical engineers, who were probably scoffed at by, you know,
| people who built siege engines or whatever.
|
| Is prompt engineering 'real' engineering? It seems easy enough to
| test whether knowledgeable, self-proclaimed prompt engineers can
| outperform a random person with only moderate experience
| requesting information from an AI in a reproducible way.
|
| If they can't, then there is probably no engineering involved in
| prompt engineering, at least at present.
|
| If they can, then it seems like they're probably not doing it
| with magic, so there is some set of reproducible techniques
| involved. At that point, would it be fair to call it engineering?
| wg0 wrote:
| IMHO - software engineering really isn't real engineering. Not
| in the traditional sense.
|
| But it certainly is based on knowing the inner workings of all
| or as many and as much of the abstraction layers.
|
| But who's a prompt engineer? Is anyone who understands how
| Tensors and Transformers work is a prompt engineer? Are prompt
| engineers model specific? I'm GPT-3.5 prompt engineer and we
| have a job openings for Alpca or StableML prompt engineers?
|
| Lastly, if these LLMs are so intelligent and have so much
| deeper understanding as their emergent capability - why prompt
| engineering is needed in the first place?
|
| You generally don't need prompt engineering even with average
| IQ humans unless one is trying to swindle someone.
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| > software engineering really isn't real engineering
|
| Most people who call themselves software engineers have not
| studied engineering at all, let alone passed an engineering
| course.
|
| I think there are two broad classes of benefit a real SE can
| provide.
|
| The first is an understanding of how software can be _proven_
| correct, and the limitations of that vis-a-vis the real world
| - power failures, etc. They can help understand what portion
| of the software needs what level of performance,
| understandability, correctness, etc. Your core trade-pricing
| engine 's needs are different than the webserver showing the
| status pages - both are required but the standards for both
| are not the same.
|
| Second is an ability (and this is what apprenticing and is
| for in a real engineering career) to judge and design entire
| systems. We "devs" often get treated as fungible work units
| and tasked with various little subsystems. A professional
| engineer entering such a space would be required to obtain a
| pretty good understanding of the entirety of the company's
| systems and very good of what they integrate with, such that
| they can characterize the cost, risk, etc, of the solution
| space before even beginning to plan the technical solution.
| Engineers often tell clients that they've envisioned the
| wrong solution. They're trained to break down silos and
| integrate solutions where possible. (Not that they all
| succeed, but that's in the training.)
|
| > if these LLMs are so intelligent and have so much deeper
| understanding as their emergent capability - why is prompt
| engineering needed in the first place?
|
| Because they're language models and people are trying to
| solve things that aren't pure language problems with them. So
| you need to map the problem to something it can represent and
| where a solution can be formed, even if that solution may not
| use an LLM call. A simple example is taking a mathematical
| word problem and solving it. Currently the LLMs do not model
| math well so you'd use the LLM to separate out the clauses of
| the problem and turn it into variables and write an equation
| from it and then you'd evaluate that snippet of code for the
| real answer.
|
| And then, depending on what part of what system this was, you
| may need to verify the parsing and other parts of the
| pipeline so you would need to build a chain where the results
| from one call are handed to other systems, maybe just back to
| the same LLM, with a bunch of examples, for multiple
| instances of more detailed checking, and then if those
| answers aren't the same, to another round where it tries to
| explain the difference and feeds that explanation into a
| round where you try to reprompt the initial layer and try
| again. Token limits often constrain how good the instructions
| and examples can be so you often have a few levels of
| prompts, nearly bulletproof ones, and shorter ones which are
| cheaper and allow other use of the token budget but may have
| more failure cases.
|
| Building with non-deterministic tools isn't impossible, all
| ropes are different and yet we have rope bridges, but you
| have to know how they work and how they fail.
|
| > But who's a prompt engineer? [If] I'm a GPT-3.5 prompt
| engineer do we need to have a job openings for Alpca or
| StableML prompt engineers?
|
| No, just like architects learning different materials during
| their career. But all those LLMs are different and you need
| to experiment (scientifically) to find their characteristics
| in your area before building on them.
| skilled wrote:
| I think the word Engineering means your own grasp on the
| subject/task at hand. For example, you can't _engineer_ a prompt
| that would lead to a result outside of the scope of what the
| model /interface is capable of doing. You can, however, engineer
| a prompt that will refine the result to get exactly what you
| want.
|
| In other words, you also have to understand the text that you're
| getting back from your prompts, and _then_ "engineer" the prompt
| to fish for better results. AI itself can do this to an extent,
| but over-engineering is also a thing, as is the fact that AI
| itself does not actually know what you want.
|
| That's all there is to it. Refine, revise, engineer - all just
| buzzwords that lead to the same end result: a game of ping-pong
| between you and the LLM.
| layer8 wrote:
| The "engineering" in "prompt engineering" is more like in "social
| engineering". It's a secondary, metaphorical meaning.
|
| For example, Google defines the second meaning of "engineering"
| as:
|
| 2. the action of working _artfully_ to bring something about. "if
| not for his shrewd engineering, the election would have been
| lost"
|
| (https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3AEngineering)
|
| Merriam-Webster has:
|
| 3 : calculated manipulation or direction (as of behavior), giving
| the example of "social engineering"
|
| (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/engineering)
|
| Random House has:
|
| 3. skillful or artful contrivance; maneuvering
|
| (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/enginee...)
|
| Webster's has:
|
| The act of maneuvering or managing.
|
| (https://www.yourdictionary.com/engineering)
|
| This is a well-established, nontechnical meaning of
| "engineering".
| atahanacar wrote:
| Is social engineering just snake oil?
| wg0 wrote:
| Good question. Is political engineering also engineering?
|
| My question is - for social or political engineering, you can
| gain definite knowledge (spying, observing, researching,
| information extraction) and then devise something.
|
| How to do the prompt engineering exactly based on what
| knowledge? How to formulize and document that knowledge so that
| it isn't just about intuition and gut feeling but rather a
| learnable and transferable skill?
| MattGaiser wrote:
| The model works in a certain way, it just needs to be discovered
| and interpreted and you might want to hire someone to help you
| with that. Not really different than getting a solutions
| architect to have an API explained to you.
| pkd wrote:
| I prefer to call it "prompt alchemy" for exactly the reasons you
| described. It can't be engineering if you can't understand what
| you are trying to engineer with. Alchemists were sort of proto-
| scientists and engineers because they were trying to get use out
| of a physical world that they did not fully understand.
| arroz wrote:
| Prompt engineer is like search bar engineer
|
| sure you can be good at googling, and it helps, but it isn't a
| profession
| nathias wrote:
| I'm sure one can develop great skill in their arcane
| incantations, but how we call it is a matter of taste
| cloudking wrote:
| Has anyone solved a real business problem with LLMs that they
| couldn't solve as efficiently before?
| codegeek wrote:
| Funny. I used to ask the same question about blockchains.
| [deleted]
| turtleyacht wrote:
| Prompt engineering is as valid as software engineering (of the
| non-certified kind). Why is it engineering?
|
| _Technical expertise._ It is technical in nature, or only one
| level removed from having to look at code or internals. Unlike
| customer support--strictly speaking--you have access to
| additional tools or authorization to investigate the matter.
|
| _Domain expertise._ You know that some phrases just don 't help.
| You know about temperature and other jargon. You can look at
| someone's paragraph of prompt and immediately suggest something.
|
| _Stakeholder safety._ You act in a manner that eliminates or
| reduces stakeholder harm. You _care about your work._
|
| If any of these are missing, it's not "engineering." Not to
| mention the importance of measuring things, data, etc--but I
| would hazard that being able to stare at graphs all day does not
| an engineer make.
|
| At the end of the day, if your job title is "Prompt Engineer,"
| who will object?
|
| Versus professional ( _certified_ ) engineers:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35669226
|
| Engineering as artful action:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35670444
|
| _Tools of the AI Engineer_ :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35669249
| xbar wrote:
| Purely.
| tourgen wrote:
| [dead]
| mirekrusin wrote:
| It's new and it's different.
|
| Don't dismiss it as "snake oil".
|
| Approach it as any scientific topic - with curiosity and open
| mind.
|
| Be rational with your skepticism.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Any form of engineering involves a certain degree of reliance on
| abstractions, e.g. a civil engineer really doesn't need to know
| everything about the molecular structure of steel and concrete to
| successfully design and build a structure such as a bridge.
|
| What does matter is having stable, predictable abstractions that
| you can rely on, so in software engineering it would be a mistake
| to rely on system-dependent undefined behavior when using a
| language like C++. You also don't necessarily need to know what
| kind of low-level optimizations the compiler and linker are using
| to generate your executable binary, though in some cases it could
| be important.
|
| With LLMs, however, it's not really clear if the same prompt
| always gives the same kind of output, and you can do 'regenerate
| response' with something like ChatGPT to see this in action.
|
| In some sense, 'prompt engineering' can be more like
| 'interviewing an engineer' in that LLMs seem to provide better
| outputs if you start with a broad, general question and then
| narrow down to your specific interest over a series of questions.
| Helping the LLM out by defining context, asking it to expand on a
| specific output it generated, pointing out where it may be
| hallucinating etc. all appears to improve the quality of output
| but I don't know if this kind of iterative process is really
| 'prompt engineering', maybe 'prompt optimization' is a better
| word for it?
|
| In other words, writing a series of prompts to an LLM that gets
| you the answer you need feels quite unlike writing a Python
| script to automate some task. You can plan the latter out from
| start to end, but the former is this back-and-forth process.
| codeptualize wrote:
| There are some degradations, just like other "engineering" like
| software engineering. I am pretty sure most people don't know the
| ins and outs of everything that makes code run, from compiler to
| CPU, especially not the CPU's of today, I doubt any one person
| fully understands them. You just know the abstraction layer you
| manipulate and learn techniques how you can make it do the things
| you it want. That is quite similar to prompt writing.
|
| You can certainly get better at it by learning the basics of LLM
| models, as well as finding and applying certain methods that
| improve the results.
|
| You can actually see quite a lot of difference between someone
| trying out some things, or someone who has spent quite a bit of
| time trying to make it do non standard things.
|
| What you call "engineering" is of course up for debate, but it's
| not snake oil.
| gjvc wrote:
| Yes
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Is sort of snake oil. People would have an entire arXiv article
| explaining "Explain Step by step" as prompt engineerning, but in
| reality, it's just natural language to say "step by step" if you
| want it to be step by step.
| mikewarot wrote:
| I think the proper term for the job should be _Prompt Alchemist_.
|
| We've seen this before. Back when Google was a search engine,
| you'd eventually get a feel for how things worked, and build a
| vocabulary of "spells" that give the results you want, without
| using the common words with many overloaded meanings. (Example:
| Annotation instead of mark up, when trying research the Marking
| Up of Hyperlinked Texts)
|
| Similar things proved to be true of Stable Diffusion and the
| image generators. It seems quite reasonable to conclude the same
| will be true of GPT4 and its kin.
| antegamisou wrote:
| Isn't it another tech-influencer LinkedIn fad BS job title to
| make those who are related to it feel important?
| ulrashida wrote:
| Professional engineers are typically:
|
| * Regulated by a profession and associated legislation
|
| * Work first to ensure the safety and welfare of the public
|
| * Perform only within their area of competence
|
| * Act as faithful agents or trustees for their clients
|
| * Avoid deception and represent matters in an objective and
| truthful manner
|
| * Invest in continuous professional development
|
| * Can be subject to penalties for malpractice: removal of
| licence, fines, or jail
|
| It's hard to see any of these applying to LLM input entry people.
| It's a even a stretch to consider them non-professional
| engineers.
| vimax wrote:
| Hard to apply those to software engineering as well.
| runjake wrote:
| In most jurisdictions, a professional engineer is essentially
| a specific legal thing.
|
| In most jurisdictions I am aware of, software engineers are
| not professional engineers. I am sure there are many
| exceptions.
|
| That said, I think all of the above are rather easy to apply
| to SWE aside from, arguably, the first bullet point.
| vimax wrote:
| And I can list counter examples for each.
|
| Civil engineers and architects don't "move fast and break
| things" or "fake it til you make it" after a 3 month
| bootcamp.
| marcellus23 wrote:
| There are software engineering domains, like aerospace,
| where the process is very stringent with rigorous
| planning and testing.
|
| There are others, like consumer app development, where
| there's simply no need for that kind of process, so it
| doesn't exist. HNers might complain, but average people
| don't care if their social media app crashes once in a
| while and they have to restart it -- so why should
| developers care? Better to spend their time on other
| stuff. Whereas people care a lot if their airplane
| crashes.
|
| I don't think it suggests anything about the relative
| value of working in those domains.
| vimax wrote:
| But those consumer apps that use or sell personal data
| against that persons interests as a business model, or
| those that leak or lose personal information through
| negligence are very harmful to society. Why should they
| get a pass?
| marcellus23 wrote:
| That's a totally unrelated argument. Plenty of "real"
| engineers work on weapons systems. Architects work on
| ultra luxury skyscrapers for Saudi businessmen. Civil
| engineers work on new highways that destroy poor
| neighborhoods. No one is talking about ethics here.
| vimax wrote:
| How is it unrelated if we're talking about software
| engineering as a profession? Yes there are some SWEs
| working in engineering fields, but the majority are not
| classically "engineers"
| marcellus23 wrote:
| Maybe you could explain how it's related? I feel like I
| did a good job of explaining how ethics makes no sense in
| this discussion in my above comment.
| ajdoingnothing wrote:
| Completely agree. It reminds me of 'They Write the Right
| Stuff' (1996) [1], how a group of engineers developed the
| software for the Space Shuttle.
|
| [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/28121/they-write-right-
| stuff
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| In the UK my computer science masters was a masters of
| engineering and I got some kind of engineering
| qualification (which I have since lost and have never used)
| eadler wrote:
| You might be interested in this three article series
| https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/are-we-really-engineers/
| _pdp_ wrote:
| I don't know if it is fair to call it "engineering" but it is not
| snake oil.
|
| Prompt engineering is programming but with natural language. Even
| between us humans being able to communicate clearly is essential
| part of understanding each other. It is also a form of
| programming.
|
| Prompt engineering, or whatever you want to call it, will be an
| important part of how we communicate with machines in the future.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| I think the integration of LLM into software interface to accept
| natural language input is the real "prompt engineering"
| azubinski wrote:
| To begin with, this is definitely not related to engineering...
| And, yes. Of course, yes.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I've wondered if some of the value of being a skilled prompt
| engineer will be eroded as the LLMs get better, especially as
| they can reply to ask clarifying questions or ask if you want XYZ
| tweaks (e.g., in the voice of Author X, or from the perspective
| of an ant, with backlighting).
|
| I'm sure there will always be some people who are better at this
| than others, but if the interface is sufficiently chatty and
| 'smart', that could significantly reduce the gap between newbies
| and seasoned prompters.
| Veen wrote:
| It's a silly name for a real phenomenon. It's better categorized
| as a form of rhetoric; instead of persuading people to do what
| you want, you're persuading LLMs using particular patterns of
| language. But no one is going to call them "prompt rhetoricians".
| "Prompt writer" would be better, but "writing" is less of the
| spirit of the times than engineering.
| throwaway019254 wrote:
| Yes
| jprd wrote:
| SEO, Software Engineer, Systems Administrator w/a budget, regex
| geniuses, obfuscated C challenge, demoscene, etc. - none of it
| snake oil.
|
| $$ and demand don't change the skills?
|
| I mean, Anakin _WAS_ good with machines.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Don't take names so literally. They're just useful labels that
| help us categorize things and communicate shared meaning. At this
| point, people know what you mean if you say "prompt engineering".
|
| Prompt engineering feels like a quite appropriate name because
| there is a lot of experimentation and refinement to find good
| ways to interact with these models (I.e. good prompts!).
|
| It doesn't perfectly map to "engineering", but it maps pretty
| well. What else would you call an iterative process of
| experimentation and refinement?
| tkiolp4 wrote:
| Prompt Engineer is the new Scrum Master.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| That's finally a real use for large language models. Replace
| the agile coaches. Needless to say, a team is better off
| replacing them with nothing.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Actually, Prompt Masters would be lot better term.
|
| And it would work in both common meanings in current usage.
| djtango wrote:
| I know someone who studied ML as black boxes kind of as her PhD
| (I don't really know the specifics so don't ask me) but I did
| find it interesting that if we're dealing with a sufficiently
| opaque and complex black box, we have to resort to our old
| friends experimentation and empiricism. So maybe it's not
| engineering but science? :p
|
| A little tongue in cheek but it did get the noodle working
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