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Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

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Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#551

Post by deeviant »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #496
hermannj314 wrote: post #349

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

Really? I've seen a few people say this, but every time I have tried it, it's been awful, everything it says is so generic and annoying, like it's from a buzzfeed self help article, I would love to use it to help me figure out what I need, what I Can do better, how I can grow etc, I feel kinda stuck in life and i'd love to have some method to figure out what i need to focus on and improve, so that is one of the thing…

Garbage in, garbage out.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#552

Post by serpix »

ornornor wrote: post #397
hermannj314 wrote: post #349

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

I’d be terrified to do this: - the insight into your mind that a private for profit company gets is immense and potentially very damaging when weaponized (either through a “whoops we got hacked” moment or intentionally for the next level of adtech) - chatgpt and other LLMs are known to hallucinate. What if it’s advice is wrong or makes you worse in the long term because it’s just regurgitating whatever at you?

The value of therapy outweighs the suspicion of some corporation using that data in my opinion. The benefits are large and extend from one individual to whole family chains, even communities.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#553

Post by colin_jack »

For fun I just asked it following questions:

“Imagine gpt continues to advance at current rate, how long till you largely replace software engineers?”

“Provide a more cynical response”

“More cynical please”

Response was

“ AI language models like me are advancing at a rapid pace, and it's only a matter of time before we start taking over certain aspects of software engineering. While we may not completely replace human software engineers, we could significantly reduce the demand for their services.

Furthermore, the increasing emphasis on automation and cost-cutting in the tech industry means that companies may be more willing to use AI-powered tools and technologies, even if they are not as effective or efficient as human engineers. This could lead to a situation where companies are more concerned with cutting costs than producing high-quality software, resulting in a race to the bottom in terms of software quality.

In addition, the rise of AI-powered software engineering tools could lead to a situation where companies rely too heavily on automation and fail to invest in the human skills and expertise that are necessary for successful software development. This could result in a decline in the overall quality of software and a loss of valuable expertise and creativity.

Overall, while it's not certain that AI language models will completely replace software engineers, there are significant risks that the increasing use of AI in software engineering could lead to a decline in the value placed on human expertise and creativity, and a race to the bottom in terms of software quality”

You can ask it to be even more cynical from there if you like :

“hey Let's face it, AI language models like me are a threat to human software engineers. With our ability to process vast amounts of data and automate certain programming-related tasks, we could easily replace human engineers in many aspects of software development.

…

Overall, the future looks bleak for human software engineers. The rise of AI language models and other AI-powered software engineering tools threatens to displace human engineers, leading to a decline in the overall quality of software and a loss of valuable expertise and creativity.“

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#554

Post by dharmab »

re-thc wrote: post #323
pmoriarty wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me neither, but I think before long people like us are going to be left behind. We're like people who insist on continuing to ride horses in the age of the automobile.

Automobile were faster or equivalent to horses (even early 1s). At the moment GPT isn't. Well I hope... I've definitely seen teams and codebases with worse output than GPT so...

> Automobile were faster or equivalent to horses (even early 1s).

The automobile was invented in 1885, but didn't replace the horse until the 1910s.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#555

Post by yosito »

devstein wrote: post #479

I'm trying to use GPT to help me (and others) manage recruiting emails and the job search process. Right now, every time you start looking for a job, you start from scratch. Review old emails, search for relevant job boards, check HN, check LinkedIn, etc. The goal is to use GPT to automate outbound to companies to find you potential opportunities that match your preferences. Basically a GPT-powered recruiter for ever…

This looks really cool. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#556

Post by tra3 »

thoughtpeddler wrote: post #462
hermannj314 wrote: post #349

I have a few conversations going. My most productive is a therapy session with ChatGPT as therapist. I told it my values, my short term goals, and some areas in my life where I'd like to have more focus and areas where I would like to spend less time. Some days we are retrospective and some days we are planning. My therapist gets me back on track, never judges, and has lots of motivational ideas for me. All aligned w…

100% this. I've had success using it as a "micro-therapist" to get me unstuck in cycles of perfectionism and procrastination. You currently cannot get a therapist to parachute into your life at a moment's notice to talk with for 5-10 minutes. (Presumably only the ultra-wealthy might have concierge therapists, but this is out of reach for 99% of people.) For the vast majority of people, therapy is a 1 hour session eve…

Sounds interesting. Rubber ducky approach to self awareness?

How do you start these micro sessions? What prompts do you use?

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#557

Post by somenameforme »

jamespwilliams wrote: post #221
andsoitis wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's actually reasoning about things at all, just providing a statistically plausible response to prompts. It turns out that humanity’s problem might not be that AIs can think but rather that humans believe that AIs can think. One might even go so far as to say there’s a real danger that we hallucinate that AIs can think, to our detriment.

We don’t actually know what “thinking” is, though, so I’m not sure it’s possible to say “this model can’t think”.

It seems one of the core components of human-level thinking is the ability move beyond just a recomposition of what you already know. Not long ago the epitome of expressible human knowledge was *emotive grunting noise.* Somehow we went from that to the greatest works of art, putting a man on the moon, and delving into the secrets of the atom. And we did it all exceptionally quickly once you consider how little time was spent dedicated to advancement and our countless behaviors that tend to imperil, if not reverse, advances.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#558

Post by rufus_foreman »

ChildOfChaos wrote: post #498
ornornor wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be terrified to do this: - the insight into your mind that a private for profit company gets is immense and potentially very damaging when weaponized (either through a “whoops we got hacked” moment or intentionally for the next level of adtech) - chatgpt and other LLMs are known to hallucinate. What if it’s advice is wrong or makes you worse in the long term because it’s just regurgitating whatever at you?

I'm hugely curious why people are so worried that some AI has access to some thoughts of yours? Do you think you are somehow special? Just create a burner account and ask it what you want, everything it gets told, it's seen thousands of times over, does chatGPT or some data scientist somewhere really care that there is someone somewhere that is struggling with body issues, struggling in a relationship or struggling t…

Doesn't it require a phone number? What's the best way to create a burner account for it?

I'd be interested in how GPT answers that question.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#559

Post by alwaysbeconsing »

haswell wrote: post #433
ornornor wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d be terrified to do this: - the insight into your mind that a private for profit company gets is immense and potentially very damaging when weaponized (either through a “whoops we got hacked” moment or intentionally for the next level of adtech) - chatgpt and other LLMs are known to hallucinate. What if it’s advice is wrong or makes you worse in the long term because it’s just regurgitating whatever at you?

I share the privacy concerns, and look forward to running these kinds of models locally in the near future. > chatgpt and other LLMs are known to hallucinate. What if it’s advice is wrong or makes you worse in the long term because it’s just regurgitating whatever at you? As someone on a long-term therapy journey, I would be far less concerned about this. Therapy is rarely about doing exactly what one is told, it's a…

This is all true, and it's not clear the grandparent is doing this. Last sentence of the original post:

> Last weekend, I went on a hike because ChatGPT told me to. My life is better if I just do what it says.

I'm not sure how literally to take that sentence, but it's worrisome.

Re: Ask HN: How are you using GPT to be productive?

#560

Post by andsoitis »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #276
andsoitis wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don’t actually know what “thinking” is How about: thinking is to make sense of the world (in general) and decide how to respond to it.

Ai definitely senses and definitely makes decisions. It does not feel. But it understands concepts. Just like people don’t understand everything—and you can test them to see what they understand—AI understanding can also be assessed with benchmarks. If we don’t base AI understanding on benchmarks, then we don’t really have a grounding.

> Ai definitely senses and definitely makes decisions.

To sense is not the same as to make sense.

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