ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving • Hacker News Board

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#281

Post by freediver » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

101008 wrote: post #22

I agree with the article but maybe you are trying to do the wrong thing with ChatGPT. I am not a native English speaker (as many of you already noticed due to my grammar mistakes), so ChatGPT have been very useful to rewrite my texts, fix grammar and maybe "beautify" them a bit. It's has been an invaluable tool in that sense. I feel much more confident now sending emails and writing important messages knowing that th…

Few things to consider here:

- By outsourcing your thinking to ChatGPT, you are not investing into improving your own skills.

- ChatGPT helps paint a picture of you that is not true to who you are

- This may lead to situatons that may make you very uncomfortable, for example speaking in person with people who built a ChatGPT-based image of you

It is probably a good idea to not rely on ChatGPT for your text any more than you are relying on Photoshop for your pictures.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#282

Post by twiss » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:28 PM UTC

ipaddr wrote: post #245

jerf wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also have to consider the kicking of the ladder away. Nobody gets to excellent without passing through the lower stages. Hard to stay motivated if it'll be 5 years just to see if maybe you have something a computer can't offer. Not impossible, but definitely a raising of the bar.

Reminds me of the guy who built his own os but took 17 years so the UI is terrible but a few years ago he finally finished. Someone will but that person isn't following a typical or even sane life and the results will be brilliant messes.

For a somewhat more "normal" example, see https://serenityos.org/. Started by one person, though there are many other contributors now.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#283

Post by jjeaff » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

EamonnMR wrote: post #105

nordsieck wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bad voice recognition software abounds everywhere, not because it is better than what it replaced in terms of UX, but because it works just enough and allows massive cost-savings on hiring people to do customer service jobs. This one really puzzles me. Voice recognition replaced phone trees. And from what I can tell, it's just worse. In this particular use case I don't think it really replaced tier 1 support. Eithe…

Phone trees are deliberately bad, so I assume voice recognition is deliberately worse. The goal is to frustrate nusance customers so that they give up.

What is so frustrating to me is how they could simply offer email/ticket based support so much easier and cheaper for most issues. And yet so many companies do not even have the option. I've been dealing with a home warranty company and they have an online portal where you can see the status of a claim. But if you click that you need help or to resolve an issue, it just gives you a popup to call their 800 number. Then you have to climb through a phone tree for 10 minutes until being told that they are experiencing higher than usual call volume and then wait on hold for 45 minutes. All for simple issues that could be handled through email. My only guess is that they don't want the paper trail of their terrible customer service.

It took a global pandemic for the California DMV to finally start an email ticket system. It is hands down so much better than going in to the DMV and has to be way more efficient for them. You simply fill out a form and you get an email with a ticket number. They respond within 3 business days asking you to send images of documents or whatever is missing. A comparatively pleasant experience.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#284

Post by sumtechguy » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #225

Mechanical9 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, that hasn't been my experience, at least not yet. Are you talking about newer movies and shows?

I've been rewatching some Star Trek Voyager on paramount+ and there is no way a person did all the subtitles. It's like 98% accurate, I'll give it that. But there are enough glaring mistakes that there's just no way a person would have made those kind of mistakes and also they are easily catchable if a single person were to proofread.

Subtitle mistakes are very common. I have tons of DVD's from before AI. The subtitles have tons of obvious errors. I doubt they re-subtitled it, thought they may have run it thru a generic AI? They probably took whatever was there and just dumped it onto the service. Some are even more fun in that they will have 3 generations of subtitles all on one disc. The TV CC fit into the vertical blank, the dvd subtitle, and the for the hearing impaired subtitle. I usually go for the hearing impaired ones. As they seem to be the most accurate, and usually have a nice bonus of putting the text over/near the person who is actually speaking. Which is nice for when chars on the show overtalk each other. A fun touch was on the toy story ones they used the font from the title cards as the font for the subtitles.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#285

Post by olddustytrail » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

switch007 wrote: post #38

Our CTO is already asking why we devs aren’t using it to be more efficient. Such a stupid and early conclusion to come to about the tool

Seems reasonable. Just ask ChatGPT if it can replace your CTO!

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#286

Post by leshow » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #171

tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trading quality for price has been happening everywhere for long enough that it is easy to see how unfortunately it will now play out in the arts as well. I mean, not that long ago all clothes you wore were custom made by a tailor, all the music you listened to was played live by musicians, all stories were brought to life in front of you by theatre actors: now all of those while still available are significantly mor…

> Trading quality for price Means that many, many more people can have something of passable quality. For example: > not that long ago all clothes you wore were custom made by a tailor If you could afford a tailor; otherwise you had to make do with homemade rags that constantly needed mending and looked terrible. > all the music you listened to was played live by musicians If you could afford to go to concerts. > all…

> Trading quality for price

> Means that many, many more people can have something of passable quality.

There is also a feedback loop where automation puts people out of work, and even though it helps make products cheaper, it also creates less of a market for the products. Your post makes it seems like there are only positives.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#287

Post by bradjohnson » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

kristiandupont wrote: post #26

Throughout my career I've encountered a good number of people who were adding very little (to none or in a few cases, negative) value to their workplace. It used to bother me immensely. On behalf of the employer and for their own sake. I can still find that sentiment if I look for it but today, my perspective is that at least in many cases, it's ok. If the company does well and the employee doesn't hate their life be…

Focusing in on the UBI section of your comment: I feel that there is always something being glossed over with the assumption that large amounts of people would stop working if we introduced UBI. I don't think this is true in the general sense (people would find other ways to work), but probably true that most people would quit their job in the short term.

Just to rant about that a bit, we acknowledge and ignore that a large proportion of people barely scraping by would probably not do what they were doing if not for the threat of homelessness and starvation. It's true that the way that things are built would have to change with UBI because most of what we benefit from in the current system is based on the exploitation of the most desperate. We should note though that a large proportion of the benefit of that exploitation is not going to bettering society, but into the pockets of the most wealthy.

At least with UBI we would remove exploitation of one's living situation as a tool to extract labour, which removes a lot of power from the existing monopolies.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#288

Post by sulcate » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #96

heavyset_go wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It exists to hide the fact that companies took a page out of Google's book and forewent customer service altogether.

This is more befuddling - they are replacing one automated system (button driven) with a worse automated system (voice driven). No one wins unless you still have a rotary phone.

Yes, it's what rfwhyte said. It's literally an externality to the company that people get inconvenienced for hours on understaffed phone lines and end up losing out on money, returns, support, etc. They benefit by reducing overhead and making the support innavigable (thus reducing successful returns/support overhead), you pay the cost with hundreds of hours of your life on hold.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#289

Post by ljm » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

JCharante wrote: post #228

svachalek wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's old fashioned. Newer systems I've dealt with just say "sorry, I can't understand you, please try again later" and hang up.

Related to this, I've had to call an airline and get told the queue is too long and to try calling back later. I have no idea who thought that was a good idea to implement because the queue will always be super long.

I’m happy enough if they just straight up say you’ll be waiting a while, and to press a button to get a call back when you reach the top of the queue.

Can get on with life until they ring you back then.

Re: ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving

#290

Post by jjeaff » Fri, Jan 13, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #279

mixedCase wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People still have high quality clothing available, but when given the option they choose to buy cheaper clothing more frequently rather than mend high quality ones. This is a preference that has been demonstrated time and again throughout the world as it became an option. So no, I don't believe it is clear at all how this is to the detriment of the average person.

> People still have high quality clothing available, but when given the option they choose to buy cheaper clothing more frequently rather than mend high quality ones. This is a preference that has been demonstrated time and again throughout the world as it became an option. This is extremely incorrect. First of all, fast fashion isn't actually necessarily cheaper. The real difference is that fast fashion exists in an…

Fast fashion is certainly cheaper for "fashionable" clothes. The market they are disrupting is a relatively small one. Cheaper clothing is available to everyone through stores like target, Walmart, or other department stores. And the quality is perfectly fine.