this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2026
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[–] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Of course. That's why we trust it. My point was that a tool doesn't need to have "understanding" (whatever that exactly means) to be useful, it needs consistency.

The compiler doesn't understand. It converts, following strict rules. There's no "thinking" or "understanding" in the process. It's a pure one-to-one conversion. That makes it consistent. If I run the same code twice through the same compiler I will get the same output. It's an output that I can trust and thus using a compiler is helpful.

If an AI was able to consistently, dependably, provably convert my natural text input into a correct program, then I'd also be able to trust it.

The problem is that this is technically impossible, because the whole point of using natural text input is that I can use vague, unclear and incomplete language to describe what I want. With an ambiguous input there cannot be an unambiguous output.