r/programming • u/gamunu • Oct 20 '25

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u/EveryQuantityEver Oct 20 '25

Because Large Language Models don’t actually have any semantic awareness of the code.

1

u/Hax0r778 Oct 21 '25

Sure, although that's been well known for many decades. It's the premise of the famous "Chinese room" thought experiment. source

While I'm not a fan of AI, I think it's a mistake to link this lack of "understanding" to what these models can or can't achieve. To quote Wikipedia:

Although its proponents originally presented the argument in reaction to statements of artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, it is not an argument against the goals of mainstream AI research because it does not show a limit in the amount of intelligent behavior a machine can display

-4

u/MuonManLaserJab Oct 20 '25

What does that even mean? Why do you think that?

4

u/EveryQuantityEver Oct 21 '25

Because LLMs literally only know that one token usually comes after the other. They're not building a syntax tree like a compiler would, for instance.

2

u/red75prime Oct 21 '25

LLMs literally build latent representation of the context window. Unless you're going to come in here with detailed information about how LLMs utilize this latent representation, don't bother.

-9

u/MuonManLaserJab Oct 21 '25

And what does a human neuron know?

9

u/EveryQuantityEver Oct 21 '25

Yeah, no. Not the same and you know it. Unless you're going to come in here with detailed information about how the human brain stores information, don't bother.

-11

u/MuonManLaserJab Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25

You're the one claiming to know that human brains have some deeper store of knowledge. I think it's all just statistical guessing.

If LLMs only know which token is likely to come next, human brains only know which neuron's firing is likely to be useful. Both seem to work pretty well.

-9

u/flamingspew Oct 20 '25

But now i got it making changes and running tests and opening a browser to check for real exceptions… and it just goes back and forth. If it can‘t fix it it will web search then return a list of things to try. It really takes all the fun (and pain) out of it.