This article is from my old blog, posted at Aug. 23rd 2024.
https://codenested.blogspot.com/2024/08/ai-cant-read-between-lines.html
One of my acquaintances make schedules for his colleague's daily leave schedule. Well, isn't it decided by the individuals themselves? Yet, there was a reason. The workplace has to be open for 7 days a week and employees are expected to take a leave for two days a week. If the selection is left to the individuals, they will certainly select specific weekdays(e.g. Saturday or Sunday), so he had to distribute the leave schedule himself.
But as you can imagine, the schedule can't be well randomized if it's done by hand. Even simple pseudorandom from your computer will generate far better result. So, he decided to use Microsoft Excel to automate the scheduling and get help from AI. And he tells the conditions:
- Each employee can take a leave of 8 days per month
- Weekday is not important, but the distribution needs some randomization
- The schedule should be overlapped as less as possible
Well, it seems to be fine until now. Isn't it? AI can generate some Excel spreadsheet. But when he added the following condition, AI goes brutal - its result generate error.
- Each employee should be able to take a leave at least once per week
If you're good at dealing with Excel, you'll quickly understand it can't be accomplished by "pure" Excel without support of VBA macros. To satisfy the above conditions I need to know when others are taking a leave, but for the others the same applies. To know me I've got to know you, but to know you I've got to know myself, ....... Yep. A typical "recurring reference" situation. If you add such conditions, AI will just "give it up" and will tell whatever it wants to say. Forget prompt engineering. The best answer shall be "it should be done with VBA macros", or it can't make it happen like a magic.
Did you decide to develop a dedicated application software program? Yet still you've got to consider a lot. Scheduling leave schedule for a month, you need to avoid overlapping as much as possible, consider weekly schedule when building the whole monthly schedule, and decide how to deal with non-full-weeks in front or end of the month. Many points to consider, and many exceptions to handle.
But, this is only valid only when you deal with the problem as it is. Yes. AS IT IS.
Thinking a bit further, you can simplify and reassemble the problem and it can be solved quite easily. If you've got to leave once a week, then you shall have leaves sufficient to leave at least once a week. If you divide the full month to number of leaves(in this case 30/8=3.75 days) and spread the leave schedule, all the employees can take a leave at least once a week. Of course in this case the randomization becomes limited when compared with original condition of "leave at least once a week", but from the employer's perspective, leaving only once a day for 3 weeks and leaving the remaining 5 days in week 4 will give him quite a headache. :P
Large Language Model(LLM) can understand the natural language and understand what he says. But, the core of LLM is statistics and probability, and based on which patterns are shown the most when we divide our language to syntactic word level. In other words, if a human gives a sentence, it has no problem in understanding it as it is, but reading so called "between the lines" or "hidden premise" and restructuring the problem itself-we call it a inference- is beyond the level current technology can achieve.
And yes, this is when human intervention is needed.
AI can generate source code, and some people say that developers won't be needed anymore, well, still it's only human who can "truly understand" the depth of the problem and reassemble in a way that the problem can be easily solved. And human acknowledges many conditions which are usually not given to AI. Though I don't know, I think this is related with prompt engineering.
So, my dear fellow software developers in the world! Now is not the time.
Until AI can "infer properly", your desk is safe!
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