Orchestras play music that was written and arranged by a composer. The musicians in the orchestra do not generate music solely based on the pieces they have studied and direction from the conductor. They play the music written by the composer with the conductor acting as a leader to synchronize and "flavor" the performance.
There is no equivalent to a musical score in prompting an LLM to generate something. The musical score is exactly what music should be played with the specific how it should be played being left to the style and taste of the musicians and conductor. It is "execution" or "exercise" of the musical score. Two different orchestras can play "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" and the results will be similar enough for listeners to recognize that it is the same music. The musical score guides the execution so that the resulting performance is mostly deterministic.
Prompt engineering and LLM generation are an imprecise approximation of what is wanted. Results from similar or even identical prompts will vary considerably depending on the LLM doing the generation, each LLM's respective training dataset, and what probability wickets are hit during the generation process. The generated results lack the determinism that the musical score provides an orchestra.
If anything, LLM is more like improv - you noodle around, sometimes you have something specific in mind that you’re looking for, every once in a while you hit upon something really good and you try to remember jt to save for later. You rarely just sit down and write a song from scratch beginning to end - much more often, you play around with lots of little bits, refining until you get what you want, something that feels good, original, complete.
I see where you're going with this, but I disagree: sewage workers have to know how their tools work, and if they all quit their jobs tomorrow, we'd all be in big trouble.
This is a poor analogy.
Orchestras play music that was written and arranged by a composer. The musicians in the orchestra do not generate music solely based on the pieces they have studied and direction from the conductor. They play the music written by the composer with the conductor acting as a leader to synchronize and "flavor" the performance.
There is no equivalent to a musical score in prompting an LLM to generate something. The musical score is exactly what music should be played with the specific how it should be played being left to the style and taste of the musicians and conductor. It is "execution" or "exercise" of the musical score. Two different orchestras can play "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" and the results will be similar enough for listeners to recognize that it is the same music. The musical score guides the execution so that the resulting performance is mostly deterministic.
Prompt engineering and LLM generation are an imprecise approximation of what is wanted. Results from similar or even identical prompts will vary considerably depending on the LLM doing the generation, each LLM's respective training dataset, and what probability wickets are hit during the generation process. The generated results lack the determinism that the musical score provides an orchestra.
The analogy holds a bit better in the world of Mr. Bean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wra2l6z7sdc
He's able to elicit a transfer of jazz style onto a Christmas carol.
If anything, LLM is more like improv - you noodle around, sometimes you have something specific in mind that you’re looking for, every once in a while you hit upon something really good and you try to remember jt to save for later. You rarely just sit down and write a song from scratch beginning to end - much more often, you play around with lots of little bits, refining until you get what you want, something that feels good, original, complete.
Is it AI Slop or is it "Slop about AI?" Stop the insanity.
This is a strained metaphor that appeals to the egos of those who self-identify as prompt engineers.
A sewage worker analogy might be more appropriate.
Sewage workers perform tasks that are important and have value.
The comparison is not apt.
I see where you're going with this, but I disagree: sewage workers have to know how their tools work, and if they all quit their jobs tomorrow, we'd all be in big trouble.