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Specifications: The missing link to making the development of LLM systems an engineering discipline

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arxiv 2412.05299 v2 pith:A3SVB452 submitted 2024-11-25 cs.SE cs.AIcs.CL

classification cs.SEcs.AIcs.CL
keywords systemsmodularreliablespecificationsbuildingcomponentsdevelopmentfuture
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal
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Despite the significant strides made by generative AI in just a few short years, its future progress is constrained by the challenge of building modular and robust systems. This capability has been a cornerstone of past technological revolutions, which relied on combining components to create increasingly sophisticated and reliable systems. Cars, airplanes, computers, and software consist of components-such as engines, wheels, CPUs, and libraries-that can be assembled, debugged, and replaced. A key tool for building such reliable and modular systems is specification: the precise description of the expected behavior, inputs, and outputs of each component. However, the generality of LLMs and the inherent ambiguity of natural language make defining specifications for LLM-based components (e.g., agents) both a challenging and urgent problem. In this paper, we discuss the progress the field has made so far-through advances like structured outputs, process supervision, and test-time compute-and outline several future directions for research to enable the development of modular and reliable LLM-based systems through improved specifications.

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Cited by 6 Pith papers

Reviewed papers in the Pith corpus that reference this work. Sorted by Pith novelty score.

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