> There's no general way to write a program that will look at another program and pronounce it "safe" for some definition of "safe."
What are you talking about? This is totally doable, if you are allowed err on the side of caution.
Similarly, it's also doable for filtering LLM prompts, if you are allowed to err on the side of caution and filter out some ultimately harmless prompts as potentially unsafe. (A whitelist is one such approach.)
It's impossible to decide the Halting problem accurately for arbitrary programs. But it's totally possible to write an algorithm that can give the judgements 'will definitely halt', 'will definitely stop' and "can't tell, might halt or might run forever".
Trivially, you can always output the 'undecided' judgement, but you can use more sophisticated systems that also make a good attempt at telling you 'halt' or 'stop' for as many programs as possible.
As usual, over extension of first principals leads them astray. The halting problem is a theoretical limitation, not one that describes whether the theoretical limitation has an impact on what can be practically accomplished. If one can stop 99.9999%, that is a practical accomplishment without circumventing the theoretical limit. Very excellent response!
What are you talking about? This is totally doable, if you are allowed err on the side of caution.
Similarly, it's also doable for filtering LLM prompts, if you are allowed to err on the side of caution and filter out some ultimately harmless prompts as potentially unsafe. (A whitelist is one such approach.)
It's impossible to decide the Halting problem accurately for arbitrary programs. But it's totally possible to write an algorithm that can give the judgements 'will definitely halt', 'will definitely stop' and "can't tell, might halt or might run forever".
Trivially, you can always output the 'undecided' judgement, but you can use more sophisticated systems that also make a good attempt at telling you 'halt' or 'stop' for as many programs as possible.