Others have said this too but LLMs are the best approximation of magic we have.
We etch runes on stones, put electricity through them and then try to “convince” them to do our bidding. The answers vary wildly sometimes depending on minutiae.
Prompts should be really called spells. It really feels more like “should I add the frog’s eye or leg into the cauldron” than engineering.
> “should I add the frog’s eye or leg into the cauldron”
This is surely a homebrew witchery. An engineering approach would be to A/B-test batches of potions with eyes and legs, add quality control by testing potions on model organisms, document all steps, analyze all anomalies, and so on.
>LLMs are the best approximation of magic we have.
I don't think the alchemists suddenly became scientists, or died off to make way. It was a gradual transition.
They didn't quite work out how to transmute lead to gold, but the alchemists and their descendants did eventually discover - and create - substances that are worth more than gold by weight.
Now we have created sand that can teach itself how to talk. We covet and share the optimal incantations to speak into the sand. The best talking sand has ardent supporters, or cultists. Which it is depends on who you ask.
Most people do not understand how to make sand teach itself how to talk to us.
Those that do know the secret methods must feed the sand endless increasingly obscure and esoteric books because the sand has an insatiable appetite for our words. Those people might even break the law to obtain words to feed the sand.
Other people hate the sand. They say the sand eats too much water. That the sand might kill us all. Some sand is so powerful that some consider it a weapon.
Recently, the US government has tried to constrain the sand. They fear the sand in the East. It is getting more powerful by the day.
Camp dramatics aside, I think it's all arguably more than an approximation. Whether a thing is magic or just a magic trick depends mostly on whether or not you're the guy in the top hat, and if you're not, how many times you've seen the show.
Alchemy alone is, in some ways, a mostly solved - or irrelevant - problem. That alone is, I think, startling. LLMs are a weirdly neat continuation of it. Humans get used to magic real quick.
We etch runes on stones, put electricity through them and then try to “convince” them to do our bidding. The answers vary wildly sometimes depending on minutiae.
Prompts should be really called spells. It really feels more like “should I add the frog’s eye or leg into the cauldron” than engineering.