https://cs.stanford.edu/~knuth/chatGPT20.txt is a conversation between Knuth and Wolfram about GPT-4.
> I find it fascinating that novelists galore have written for decades about scenarios that might occur after a "singularity" in which superintelligent machines exist. But as far as I know, not a single novelist has realized that such a singularity would almost surely be preceded by a world in which machines are 0.01% intelligent (say), and in which millions of real people would be able to interact with them freely at essentially no cost.
> I myself shall certainly continue to leave such research to others, and to devote my time to developing concepts that are authentic and trustworthy. And I hope you do the same.
> not a single novelist has realized that such a singularity would almost surely be preceded by a world in which machines are 0.01% intelligent (say), and in which millions of real people would be able to interact with them freely at essentially no cost.
Aren't Asimov's Multivac stories basicaly this? Humans build a powerful computer with a conversational interface helping them doing all kind of science and stuff, then before they know they become Multivac's pets.
I don't know why but it makes me smile that he did this experiment by having a grad student type the questions for chatgpt and copy the results.
That link is great!
Knuth has a beautiful way of writing systematically (as can be expected of the inventor of "Literate Programming").
That's related. Thank you for posting it.
But what does Knuth think of "vibe coding" or "agentic coding"?
What does he think of "The Dawn of the Dark Ages of Computer Programming"?
I don't think Knuth needs to stoop that low. He actually knows what he's doing.