On Sun, 2 Aug 2026 at 21:14, Theodore Tso <[email protected]> wrote:
> > People have tried using TPUs for EM field simulations and found them to
> be
> > largely useless because 16 bit floats aren't all that great.
>
> You should *never* try to use LLM's to do math, and in fact, that's
> not how it gets used when it is used properly.
>
> For example, when I asked Gemini to give me a model answering a
> financial investment question (e.g., under what assumptions should I
> sell highly appreciated stock, and take the tax hit right away, but
> allowing me to diversify my holdings, and when does the advantage of
> the diversified holdings over take the initial capital gains tax
> cost). The way the LLM answered my question was that it generated a
> Python script, and then ran that Python program in a sandbox, and the
> formatted the results in a table illustrating the assumptions when the
> breakeven would be hit.
>
> More importantly, it allowed me to download the Python script, and I
> was able to take that script and modify and enhance it to try out different
> assumptions.
>
> This was incredibly useful to me, and given that the Python program
> was created specifically to model the question that I was asking, (a)
> the specialized floating point formay used by LLM's doesn't matter,
> (b) we don't have to worry about all of the (valid) concerns of LLM
> not being able to do math, and (c) given that the python script was
> generated to specific to my question, unless you believe that how to
> use python libraries to do time value of money calculations are a
> potential copyright problem, I'm not particularly worried about
> copyright issues. (The python script was a throwaway, and I wasn't
> planning on redistributing it anyway. :-)
This is another *HUGE* benefit of this newest generation of LLMs and it is
a revolutionary change in the wider world that I am am already seeing daily
- it is personal free software happening at massive scale.
People, who are *NOT* programmers are able to describe their needs in plain
language and get their own, personal free software generated that does
exactly what *they* want it to do. Be it a Python script, be it a OpenSCAD
3D model, be it an Android or iPhone application or a web app. We are
entering into a domain, where an older, non-programmer relative of mine was
able to generate an Android app for themselves that replace a paid app and
had extra features they really wanted and get that on their phone working
perfectly within a couple of hours. It is life-changing enablement that
free software movement aways wanted to deliver to everyone, but so far has
only been able to deliver to programmers.
This is a massive benefit, that we, as programmers, do not really see or
value all that much.
--
Best regards,
Aigars Mahinovs
