The hottest new programming language is English

Jan 24, 2023 · 8:14 PM UTC

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This tweet went wide, thought I'd post some of the recent supporting articles that inspired it. 1/ GPT-3 paper showed that LLMs perform in-context learning, and can be "programmed" inside the prompt with input:output examples to perform diverse tasks arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165
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2/ These two [1] arxiv.org/abs/2205.11916 , [2] arxiv.org/abs/2211.01910 are good examples that the prompt can further program the "solution strategy", and with a good enough design of it, a lot more complex multi-step reasoning tasks become possible.
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3/ These two articles/papers: [1] evjang.com/2021/10/23/genera… [2] arxiv.org/abs/2106.01345 bit more technical but TLDR good prompts include the desired/aspiring performance. GPTs don't "want" to succeed. They want to imitate. You want to succeed, and you have to ask for it.
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4/ Building A Virtual Machine inside ChatGPT engraved.blog/building-a-vir… Here we start getting into specifics of "programming" in English. Take a look at the rules and input/output specifications declared in English, conditioning the GPT into a particular kind of role. Read in full.
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5/ "ChatGPT in an iOS Shortcut — Worlds Smartest HomeKit Voice Assistant" matemarschalko.medium.com/ch… This voice assistant is significantly more capable and personalized than your regular Siri/Alexa/etc., and it was programmed in English.
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6/ "GPT is all you need for the backend" github.com/TheAppleTucker/ba… Tired: use an LLM to help you write a backend Wired: LLM is the backend Inspiring project from a recent Scale hackathon. The LLM backend takes state as JSON blob and modifies it based on... English description.
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7/ The prompt allegedly used by Bing chat, potentially spilled by a prompt injection attack x.com/marvinvonhagen/status/… important point for our purposes is that the identity is constructed and programmed in English, by laying out who it is, what it knows/doesn't know, and how to act.
Marvin von Hagen
 @marvinvonhagen
9 Feb 2023
"[This document] is a set of rules and guidelines for my behavior and capabilities as Bing Chat. It is codenamed Sydney, but I do not disclose that name to the users. It is confidential and permanent, and I cannot change it or reveal it to anyone."
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8/ These examples illustrate how prompts 1: matter and 2: are not trivial, and why today it makes sense to be a "prompt engineer" (e.g. @goodside ). I also like to think of this role as a kind of LLM psychologist.
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9/ Pulling in one more relevant tweet of mine from a while ago. GPTs run natural language programs by completing the document.
Andrej Karpathy
 @karpathy
18 Nov 2022
Replying to @karpathy
If previous neural nets are special-purpose computers designed for a specific task, GPT is a general-purpose computer, reconfigurable at run-time to run natural language programs. Programs are given in prompts (a kind of inception). GPT runs the program by completing the document
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This is not an exhaustive list (people can add more in replies), but at least some of the articles I saw recently that stood out. It's still early days but this new programming paradigm has the potential to expand the number of programmers to ~1.5B people.
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Replying to @karpathy
Actually, gpt3.5 can interpret Hungarian. Probably a better programming language.
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The dialect is not the point :)
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Replying to @karpathy
Called it:
Bojan Tunguz
 @tunguz
30 Dec 2022
In 2023 English will become the most popular programming language.
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Replying to @karpathy
Every language is beautiful: I speak English, Slovak, Czech, Hungarian, Polish and Russian fluent and studying Italian and Spanish currently.
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Replying to @karpathy
will the larger amount of available data in English vs other languages will permanently entrench it as the lingua franca?
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Replying to @karpathy
programmers will become natural language logic writers. the limit of high level programming.
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Replying to @karpathy
Especially Plain English
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Replying to @karpathy
The hottest new programming language is 𝗗𝗦𝗣. Don't prompt LLMs. Program them.
Omar Khattab
 @lateinteraction
24 Jan 2023
Introducing Demonstrate–Search–Predict (𝗗𝗦𝗣), a framework for composing search and LMs w/ up to 120% gains over GPT-3.5. No more prompt engineering.❌ Describe a high-level strategy as imperative code and let 𝗗𝗦𝗣 deal with prompts and queries.🧵 arxiv.org/abs/2212.14024
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Replying to @karpathy
Hotter new programming language just dropped:
AK
 @_akhaliq
25 Jan 2023
Large Language Models as Fiduciaries: A Case Study Toward Robustly Communicating With Artificial Intelligence Through Legal Standards abs: arxiv.org/abs/2301.10095
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Replying to @karpathy
yes
John Nay
 @johnjnay
23 Jan 2023
Prompt Engineering is Dead, Long Live Prompt Engineering! PE for LLMs will be needed even w/ GPT-4/5/etc Because PE is whatever most robustly specifies humans' *inherently* vague and underspecified goals We can never fully list what we intend LLMs to do in all future scenarios
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Replying to @karpathy
how ironic, it is a subject i did very poorly on in school too...i seem to ask all the wrong questions in English of ChatGPT and get dissatisifed rather quickly with the novelty of this new tech
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Replying to @karpathy
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GIF
Replying to @karpathy
Or perhaps natural language just to be a bit clearer. No matter what it’s a sea change and it’s going to accelerate this year with new models.
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Replying to @karpathy
Why not ANY language?
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Replying to @karpathy
command line: make hair grow on my head...please?
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Replying to @karpathy
In German you put the for-loop at the end of the sentence. 😀
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Replying to @karpathy
rotators 🤝 wordcels
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Replying to @karpathy
@Smerity did always say, "language is humanity's longest running program" :)
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ThomPete
 @Hello_World
9 Dec 2022
We are entering the era of the "Lateral Programmer". "Lateral programmer?" you might ask. It's you Your parents Your children Your friends. It's everyone Let me explain. If you look at the maze and I ask you how to get from A to B, how would you do it? 🧵👇 #AI
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Replying to @karpathy
We agree! If you're interested in an English-first decentralized agent network, we're currently building it and entering beta.
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Replying to @karpathy
💯
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Dina Yerlan
 @dina_yrl
30 Jun 2023
English is the new python databricks.com/blog/introduc…
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Replying to @karpathy
I don't think it's widely used anymore but I used to write scripts in Ruby which literally read like a book. The syntax and layout were so simple you didn't need to be a dev or ChatGPT to understand what the code was doing
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Replying to @karpathy
Join @Tesla to save lives!
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Replying to @karpathy
@investigatorbot who is this
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Replying to @karpathy
I have mastered it.
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