LLMs can build their own code or close enough, and are used for AI work directly (both from what METR study shows and from reports I've read from the bigger companies themselves), but this is not what I meant as there isn't much point for anyone outside the bleeding edge companies to do this given open models exist.
I've had LLMs write code which performs a genetic algorithm for balancing video game AI*. There's a very soft line in quickly moving metaphorical sand between what it can do and what it can't, and right now I'm not sure which side of that line you'd find a user saying they want a computer vision system to turn a robot arm into a barista given LLMs can search for, download, read, and seemingly do a decent job of implementing research papers e.g. sim2real.
Just to be explicit though: I'm not saying the state of AI-led research is sufficient to render unimportant researchers who find better ways to train AI, just me as a software engineer is no longer a blocker to productising that research.
* The same LLM had also written the game AI, but while I'm fine pointing to a genetic algorithm balancing it, I don't think that the game AI in itself counts because "game AI" is GOFAI.
I've had LLMs write code which performs a genetic algorithm for balancing video game AI*. There's a very soft line in quickly moving metaphorical sand between what it can do and what it can't, and right now I'm not sure which side of that line you'd find a user saying they want a computer vision system to turn a robot arm into a barista given LLMs can search for, download, read, and seemingly do a decent job of implementing research papers e.g. sim2real.
Just to be explicit though: I'm not saying the state of AI-led research is sufficient to render unimportant researchers who find better ways to train AI, just me as a software engineer is no longer a blocker to productising that research.
* The same LLM had also written the game AI, but while I'm fine pointing to a genetic algorithm balancing it, I don't think that the game AI in itself counts because "game AI" is GOFAI.