Software – jonayl.ing

The following is a collection of thoughts on recent febrile discussion of “prompt engineering” as a way to communicate intention to models.

My initial intuition here was that the rather excitable proponents of prompt engineering were making a category mistake (in thinking that all intentions could be reduced to language). On deeper consideration I don’t believe that intuition was correct – but nevertheless that “prompt” engineering, or replacement of formal with natural languages in technical contexts, is even less plausible.

By clawing the whole of human cognition into language it cheapens language’s transcendent aesthetic qualities

So a minor act of stupidity on my part today got me thinking about cleverness of user interfaces, and when it can sometimes be a bad thing. Specifically: I managed to leave the (side)lights on my car switched on overnight, and sure enough in the morning the battery was pancake-flat. One rapid bike ride/train journey later and I was only the one hour late for work, but embarrassingly this isn’t the first time I’ve forgotten them – though I have been able to get the car started (and indeed open the doors) on previous occasions….

So what’s my excuse? Well, the reason I turn my sidelights on in first place is sort of complex.

We start to think of systems that enforce decisions based on encoded tables of values as being “wilful”. Even if we agree with these ends, it’s a very natural to resist the interference, especially when it comes out of a “dumb machine”

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