ENB: About programming and design

[Edward K. Ream]

The following thoughts started with speculation about the tools AIs might use. But AIs will change programming in ways that we cannot imagine. AI programmers will be alien beings. AIs will probably not use programming languages or IDEs.

AIs might be able to back-translate their work into python, but I suspect that capability will be irrelevant. Let's look at the question in other ways:

AI programmers will likely never make blunders like misspellings. They will be "perfect" in much the same way as Alpha Go is. AIs will make global inferences about programs, like a super mypy. As a result, AI-written apps will be flexible. That is, assuming AIs will write apps :-)

Emulating AIs

How can we make our programs less error-prone and more flexible? A surprising answer arose. We can limit the form our programs can take. The more constrained our programs are, the better we can check them.

Back to code analysis

Lately, I've turned my attention to analyzing Leo's sources. I've done this before. Looking at the problem with fresh eyes suggested ways of simplifying past approaches. But further work reminds me of all the challenges :-)

Summary

AI programmers will be alien beings. We can't know how society (and corporations) will interact with them.

Safety and flexibility will always be important goals. We might be able to further these goals by constraining our programs. But enforcing such constraints will be challenging, even for Leo. Still, this challenge is amusing for now.

Edward