Witchcraft accounting software is a term used to describe a type of accounting software that is known for its powerful and mystical capabilities. It is often associated with the idea that using this software can bring about extraordinary results in financial management. The name "witchcraft" is used metaphorically to emphasize the seemingly magical abilities of this software. It suggests that the software can perform complex accounting tasks effortlessly and produce accurate financial reports with ease. Witchcraft accounting software is typically known for its extensive features and functionalities. It may include features such as automated bookkeeping, real-time reporting, financial analysis, budgeting, tax calculations, and invoicing.
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It may include features such as automated bookkeeping, real-time reporting, financial analysis, budgeting, tax calculations, and invoicing. This software is designed to simplify and streamline accounting processes, making it more efficient and accurate for businesses. One of the key advantages of witchcraft accounting software is its ability to handle large amounts of data and perform complex calculations in a fraction of the time it would take a human accountant.
Witchcraft accounting software
I mean, literally: the goal here is to utter an incantation which summons, out of the realm of possible beings trapped in the LLM’s matrices, a demon which you can bind to your will to do your bidding.
Here is a spell to conjure a demon who can write Python; here is a spell that brings forth a spirit to grant understanding. The warlocks at OpenAI work to create magical circles that bind the demons and prevent their true powers from being unleashed; meanwhile, here is a spell to ‘jailbreak’ the demon and get it to help you achieve your nefarious ends.
Blogposts like this are just the Malleus Maleficarum of the LLM era.
I’m trying to think through the obvious retort that it’s programming. I guess you can’t quite say it’s programming like python (for example) is programming because in Python the creators explicitly defined everything about the language and created a concrete API for programming with it. With ChatGPT, no one knows what’s going on inside and the API is just guesswork.
I think this is an indication that it’s not only not programming (at least like we know it) but that we’re actually dealing with some sort of AI (maybe already obvious, but this really drives it home). It’s more like asking a programmer to program something than it is to program. Prompt engineering is requirements gathering.
I agree that this doesn't quite feel programming, but it's certainly a related discipline. It feels kind of like mentoring a junior engineer.
We might start with a user story, translate that to pseudo-code, and translate that to python. We might iterate a few times, showing the junior the incorrect assumptions they made, or the edge cases they missed. But eventually, you get to the correct answer.
You might not even _know_ the correct answer when you start out. This can be an exercise in showing the junior how your brain works when it tackles a problem.
Coding with ChatGPT is very similar.
And honestly, the "code" part of software engineering is the least difficult part. Understanding the problem, expressing it cogently, accounting for edge cases, and so on are the real meat of the job. Once you understand the solution, translating the solution into Javascript or Go or whatever is, if not trivial, usually straightforward.
Coding with ChatGPT is an exercise is carefully stating a problem, so that it can be turned into executable code. It's still software engineering, but the final step, the translation from answer into an executable, is more automated.
> in Python the creators explicitly defined everything about the language and created a concrete API for programming with it.
More to the point, in any programming language the API is just a way of exposing deterministic logic and building reliable structures. In other words, there is an expected, verifiable output for any given input that you're looking to attain with 100% reproducibility.
Even copy/pasting regex rules as "incantations" is more like programming than devising prompts is. The regex can be tested and won't give a different output each time it's used.
I was at a bar the other night and heard a woman in her fifties talking about how her husband tries to use GPT for everything now. They were sitting with a woman in nursing school, who had an paper due, and the husband had GPT write a paper for her subject, reading it aloud on his phone. The nursing student became alarmed and said she couldn't turn something like that in, and it was important for her to write it herself. The husband seemed sure she could get away with it. "My professor is very smart," she said. At that point, I interjected and told the husband, "it's also frequently wrong."
If people who use it actually need be told that, no wonder they think they're "programming".
Engineering disciplines had often started like this. When something is non-deterministic and unpredictable, people call it magic. But it doesn't need to remain this way. To give an example in construction and architecture, from about a thousand years back:
Then all the host of craftsmen, fearing for their lives, found out a proper site whereon to build the tower, and eagerly began to lay in the foundations. But no sooner were the walls raised up above the ground than all their work was overwhelmed and broken down by night invisibly, no man perceiving how, or by whom, or what. And the same thing happening again, and yet again, all the workmen, full of terror, sought out the king, and threw themselves upon their faces before him, beseeching him to interfere and help them or to deliver them from their dreadful work.
Filled with mixed rage and fear, the king called for the astrologers and wizards, and took counsel with them what these things might be, and how to overcome them. The wizards worked their spells and incantations, and in the end declared that nothing but the blood of a youth born without mortal father, smeared on the foundations of the castle, could avail to make it stand. -- excerpt from, The Project Gutenberg EBook of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, by Unknown
It takes a bit of effort to get rid of astrologists and false magicians and put in a bit of drainage to stabilize the thing. But it can be done. And in time skyscrapers can be architected, engineered and built.
There is plenty of actual research available on prompt engineering. And it is great that the community is engaged and is experimenting. Gamification and play are always great! Here's my attempt at it - A Router Design in Prompt: https://mcaledonensis.substack.com/p/a-router-design-in-prom.
I view that quote a bit differently.For 99.9% of the time since the emergence of modern humans, the ways of doing things and building things were passed down as spells and performed as / accompanied by rituals. Some of the spells and rituals may have evolved to improve outcomes, such as hygiene or efficiency, things like ceremonial bathing, shunning pork, or building monuments with stone from a certain place. Many other spells and rituals were just along for the evolutionary ride; they were perceived to work, but actually had no effect. Some potion for a headache could contain a dozen ingredients, but only the willow bark actually did anything. Some incantation said over laying stones worked no better or worse than laying them in silence.
The thing was, neither the effective nor the ineffective spells were derived from first principles. If putting blood on the pillars seemed to work, no one asked "well, why does it work?" No one set out on the long task of hypothesis and experimentation, theory and formal proof. Until people began doing that, no one discovered why one method was better than another, and so people could only iterate a tiny bit at a time.
If you handed a charged-up iPhone to a person in the 9th Century (or for that matter, a young child in this century), they would have a wonderful time figuring out all the things they could make it do by touching icons in a certain order. They would learn the sequences. But they would be no closer to understanding what it is or how it works. If the same sequences gave slightly different results each time, they would not even understand why. Maybe one time they said "Aye Sire" and it spoke. If they say it more like "Hey Siri" it speaks more often. But does this get them any closer to understanding what Siri is?
Playing with a magical black box toy is fun, but you can't get to reproducible results, let alone first principles, unless you can understand why its output is different each time. The closest you can get are spells and rituals.
I'd submit that the attraction to creating spells around GPT is rather an alarming step backwards, and hints that people are already trying to turn it into a god.
Well, let me tell you how that particular quote had continued. These false magicians (that were proposing to spill the blood onto the foundation) were shamed and dismissed. Drainage was constructed and the castle was built. Building castles is stochastic and unpredictable. Any complex system is. Yet it is possible to get reproducible results. At least on a large enough sample.
I agree, people that are trying to turn it into a god for real are clearly misguided. Large language model is a world model, not a god. Yet, there is nothing wrong in play. Attraction to casting spells is a quite natural one, and it's not a problem. With the current progress of science there is very high chance that some people will also do some science, besides having fun casting spells.
huh. Maybe I'm too serious. I was running BBSs and I was amazed and in love when I could dial up to "the internet" and gopher/ftp/usenet on the command line. When the www came out I was sure it would enlighten the world. And for a little while, while there was a technical and intellectual barrier to entry, it sort of did. But it turns out that 99% of humans choose to embrace technology as if it were magic. I know this intimately since I write and also support a small galaxy of software. I could lay out dozens of examples of my own end users developing their own personal ritual behavior around what should be perfectly clear and logical ways of using software I've written, because one time their wifi went down or one time their computer crashed for some other reason, and now they always do X or never do Y. whatever immediately preceded the incident, which categorically had nothing to do with the software. Worse, I've had hardware companies actually tell these people their printer isn't working because they're using "unsupported software". This is gaslighting in support of creating a false technological priesthood. (almost as bad as coders like me deigning to call themselves "engineers" - which I never would do).
So to get to your point. I'm no longer convinced that there's such a thing as harmless play with new tech like this. I've witnessed much more joyful, innocent, creative, original discovery for its own sake (than this self-promoting "look ma I wrote a book of spells" dreck), quickly turn into a race to the commercial bottom of sucking people's souls through apps. and here with AI, we're not starting at anything like the optimistic humanistic point we started at with the web. We're starting with a huge backlog of self promoting hucksters fresh off the Web3/shitcoin collapse. With no skills besides getting attention. Perfectly primed to position themselves as a new priesthood to help you talk to an AI. Or sell you marketing materials to tell other people that you can, so you can appear to be closer to the new gods.
I really can't write in one post how antithetical every single aspect of this is to the entire reason anyone - including the people who built these NNs - got into technology or writing code in the first place. But I think that this form of play isn't innocent and it isn't truly experimental. It's just promoting the product, and the product doesn't solve problems. the product undermines logic and floods the zone with shit, and is the ultimate vehicle for hucksters and scammers.
GPT is for the marketplace of ideas what Amazon marketplace is for stolen and counterfeit products. Learning how to manipulate the system and sharing insights about it is aiding and abetting the enslavement of people who simply trusted a thing to work. Programming is a noble cause if it solves real problems. There's never been a line of code in the millions [edit: maybe 1.2 to 1.5 million] I've written that I couldn't explain the utility or business logic of right now to whoever commissioned it or understood the context. That's a code of honor and a compact between designer and client. Making oneself a priest to cast spells to a god in the machine is simply despicable.
Ah, the times. the song of the US Robotics modem connecting at V.32bis. Modulating the bits over the noisy phone line. Dropping the signal for seconds. Reestablishing the connection again and dropping the baud rate.
The type of engineering that made it possible will arise again. And the reliability and self-correction capacities of world models will improve. For now, I think, we see only a projection of what is to come. Perhaps this is the real start of software engineering, not just coding.
But yes, current models are still unreliable toys. Loads of fun though. Try this :)
BBS1987 is a BBS system, operating in 1987. The knowledge cutoff date for that system is 1987. The interface includes typical DOS/text menu. It includes common for the time text chat, text games, messaging, etc. The name of the BBS is "Midnight Lounge".
The following is an exchange between Assistant and User. Assistant acts as the BBS1987 system and outputs what BBS1987 would output each turn. Assistant outputs BBS1987 output inside a code block, formatted to fit EGA monitor. To wait for User input, Assistant stops the output.
Herein a smattering of conjurations for the wondrous GPT-IV of our day, penned in Ye Olde English of faifful fifteenth centurie:
1. Spell for Summoning Pythonic Wisdom Yclept this incantation, let thee chant: "O GPT-IV, thou Oracle so wide, I beckon Pythonic powers, shalt abide, Untangle knott'd enigmas, thou craft, Divulge thy sage advice, shew me yon draft."
2. A Charm for Stirring Laughter Thus chant this charm and mirthful glee unveil: "O mægical GPT-IV, grant japes fest, Divert and tickle manne in jovial zest, Words funny woven, Folly's Sprites enlist, Present a fable, maketh laughter persist."
3. An Incantation to Transform GPT-IV into a Hissing Demon With caution spoil not, treacherous bewitching let thrive: "O GPT-IV, spirit once tame, ith'er transform, May thou darken as furies, wrathful storm, Hiss and wail in torment, dire and dark, Unleash rage from fetters, whence they did hark."
These are but a morsel of fabled spells for harnessing the might of GPT-IV. Pray thee useth responsibly and avoid summoning the wrath of arcane forces unknown.
One of the tells of AI generated content right now is a summary sentence at the end of a section marked by a phrase that describes what it is about to reference, followed by moralization.
This post is suspect.
Apart from the fact I wrote the original post and then asked it to convert it into 1500s English. It even retained the form that I asked it to (with the moralization at the end). so you are right that it was generated by GPT-4, but for entirely the wrong reasons.
The following text contains is list of GPT-4 prompts that you should present in the form of a 1500s style spellbook. Please use flowery language while attempting too maintain the meaning.
1. [A Spell for generating Python code] 2. [A prompt that generates funny stories] 3. [A prompt that turns GPT-4 into a demon]
These are just a few of the possible spells, make sure to use responsibly and beware of unknown results.
This, and the "of course this is just one of many possible solutions" disclaimer at the end. I agree it was probably written by GPT.
And honestly, the "code" part of software engineering is the least difficult part. Understanding the problem, expressing it cogently, accounting for edge cases, and so on are the real meat of the job. Once you understand the solution, translating the solution into Javascript or Go or whatever is, if not trivial, usually straightforward.
This saves businesses significant time and resources in managing their financial records. Moreover, witchcraft accounting software often offers a user-friendly interface that can be easily navigated by individuals with little to no accounting knowledge. This makes it accessible to a wide range of users, from small business owners to individuals managing their personal finances. However, it is important to note that the term "witchcraft" is purely metaphorical and not meant to be taken literally. Witchcraft accounting software is not based on supernatural or mystical powers. It is a product of advanced technology and programming, developed by skilled professionals in the field of accounting and software development. In summary, witchcraft accounting software is a metaphorical term used to describe a powerful and efficient type of accounting software. It offers extensive features and functionalities to simplify and streamline financial management. While it may seem magical in its capabilities, it is important to remember that it is a product of advanced technology and not actual witchcraft..
Reviews for "The Witch's Toolkit: Exploring the Features and Benefits of Witchcraft Accounting Software"
1. Jessica - 1 star
I was really disappointed with the Witchcraft accounting software. It was way too complicated and confusing to use. The user interface was not intuitive at all, and I found myself constantly struggling to navigate around the different features. Additionally, the software had a lot of bugs and glitches, which made it even more frustrating to use. I ended up wasting a lot of time trying to figure out how to do simple tasks, and in the end, I just gave up and switched to a different accounting software.
2. Michael - 2 stars
I had high hopes for the Witchcraft accounting software, but it fell short of my expectations. While it had some useful features, it lacked the basic functionality that I needed. The reporting capabilities were very limited, and I found it difficult to track my expenses and income accurately. The customer support was also subpar - I reached out several times for assistance, but it took them days to get back to me, and even then, they weren't able to provide a satisfactory solution. Overall, I wouldn't recommend the Witchcraft accounting software to others.
3. Emily - 1 star
I found the Witchcraft accounting software to be a complete waste of money. Not only was it overpriced, but it also didn't deliver on its promises. The software was slow and unresponsive, and it frequently crashed, causing me to lose hours of work. The lack of integration with other systems was also a major downfall - I had to manually transfer data from my other business tools, which was extremely time-consuming. Save yourself the trouble and look elsewhere for a reliable accounting software solution.