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points by armchairhacker 8 hours ago | 0 comments
Is this a significant problem? It seems like there are 15 solutions to every AI “text format” problem, but all are merely structure over feeding the AI informal English, structure which I believe the “transformer” model is specifically able to strip to a common form (which is how training it on the entire internet worked).

AI does benefit from learning to use skills, and being instructed with good structures (like “save [specific important kind of detail] in memories” and “plan before implementing anything”). But none of these memory solutions seem better than any other, they’re basically just different folders. Your CLAUDE.md can say “see AGENTS.md” and AGENTS.md can say “write memories to .agent/memories/“, and I’d be interested in a measurement, but I assume it performs almost the exact same as native CLAUDE.md and .claude/memories.

One thing I’ve noticed AI does much better than me, is not have OCD over the “perfect” solution.

[–] bee_rider 3 hours ago
As someone not involved in AI development, it seems really surprising that memories are another text-format issue. Seems like (in a human analogy) something more equivalent to your notebook or scratchpad.

Memories are lossy things that live in our brains, I’d expect they to be stored in some native LLM encoded representation (which would make the lack of standardization understandable).

This probably seems like a dumb distinction, but I think some of the problems in the article come from calling these things memories. Like, the prompt injection/provenience issue. The model has received some notes from someone about a topic, if it they were treated as “notes from <whoever sent them> about <topic>” instead of “my memories about <topic>” that should put things on the right footing to start at least, right?

[–] reactordev 7 hours ago
This is what happens when you treat the LLM as a black box, you end up building the same stuff around it. Like trying to make your dog understand your intentions. You can train it to do tricks and it recognizes specific reward patterns but most dogs have no idea what you’re saying beyond basic triggers.
[–] soraminazuki 6 hours ago
It's sad what software engineering has been reduced to for a lot of people. It's basically pickup artists compiling a list of "body languages" for LLMs, pretending as if there's science behind any of their interpretations.
[–] yladiz 5 hours ago
At least body language has some studies put into understanding it.
[–] soraminazuki 4 hours ago
That may be so, but most "body language tips" circulated online are cringey and lack the rigor and nuance of proper scientific studies. I think of human reactions as more complex than what those kinds of online materials imply.

It's even worse when applied to LLMs, which are more unpredictable.

[–] ares623 2 hours ago
At the very least the pick up artists have a common baseline in that they are also human.
[–] reactordev 1 hour ago
And LLMs have a common baseline in that they produce tokens. The comparison is apt. Both fields should be studied. Body language and Prompt Language.
[–] alberto467 2 hours ago
People had this grand idea of software engineering and how much complex it is and problem solving and this and that and you actually deserve 250k to do your “complex” job.

In reality many of them have not needed to look at a data structure or do any real computer science for years. They were just attending bullshit meetings and approving some pr with some basic sql query or some new react code.

Common people knew very little about computers and so they thought they were running on magic and that the software engineers were the magicians.

[–] soraminazuki 1 hour ago
Can't we just appreciate computer science, or any other field of study, for what it is? It's unfortunate that so many people now treat the fundamentals underpinning our whole profession as a nuisance to be left for LLMs, or resume padding.
[–] esafak 2 hours ago
That's what 'democratization' looks like. Everybody's an AI engineer now!
[–] Tejush 3 hours ago
Honestly I have just a few lines in claude.md. And one of them is treat agents.md as the main file and update skills in the .agents folder and use it as source of your skills. Its working so far.