this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2024
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[–] rational_lib@lemmy.world 11 points 1 month ago (17 children)

As I use copilot to write software, I have a hard time seeing how it'll get better than it already is. The fundamental problem of all machine learning is that the training data has to be good enough to solve the problem. So the problems I run into make sense, like:

  1. Copilot can't read my mind and figure out what I'm trying to do.
  2. I'm working on an uncommon problem where the typical solutions don't work
  3. Copilot is unable to tell when it doesn't "know" the answer, because of course it's just simulating communication and doesn't really know anything.

2 and 3 could be alleviated, but probably not solved completely with more and better data or engineering changes - but obviously AI developers started by training the models on the most useful data and strategies that they think work best. 1 seems fundamentally unsolvable.

I think there could be some more advances in finding more and better use cases, but I'm a pessimist when it comes to any serious advances in the underlying technology.

[–] ggppjj@lemmy.world 13 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Not copilot, but I run into a fourth problem:
4. The LLM gets hung up on insisting that a newer feature of the language I'm using is wrong and keeps focusing on "fixing" it, even though it has access to the newest correct specifications where the feature is explicitly defined and explained.

[–] obbeel 3 points 1 month ago

I've also run into this when trying to program in Rust. It just says that the newest features don't exist and keeps rolling back to an unsupported library.

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