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Post-GPT Computing

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Re: Post-GPT Computing

#121

Post by crop_rotation »

tjr wrote: post #116
crop_rotation wrote: post #103

What happens to social mobility in the post GPT world. Given that knowledge work (not just software) has been one big option for people to climb the social ladder. If the AI can reasonably do all knowledge work in future, the amount of social climbing opportunities will drastically decrease. And no, UBI will not create more opportunities for social mobility. It seems like more and more people will have to compete wit…

What does GPT know beyond what we have (directly or indirectly) taught it? Could it have figured out how to extract five seconds of video from an MPG file if that knowledge had not been made available to it? Would it have invented the MPG format (or something comparable) on its own? Would it have developed the web and HTTP protocol on top of TCP/IP? And so on. Maybe the answer is in fact "yes", or even "yes, and it w…

The amount of people who create genuinely new things is so tiny that I am not sure it is even relevant to the discussion. And here I mean genuinely new things, not translating some C lib to java or similar stuff, or changing existing libraries to handle more stuff.

If the amount of people that will have social mobility opportunities will be equivalent to the amount of people who could have invented the MPG format or something comparable, then my point is made.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#122

Post by slfnflctd »

nunez wrote: post #91

I agree that GPT will make creating software redundant. Writing is definitely on the wall for outsourcing and MVP-style work. GPT can create a landing page and a backend/frontend for a business _literally today_. You just have to ship it, but it won't be long until that isn't needed. There will still be a lot of value in understanding how systems work and interact with each other, at least until ML is able to build a…

> at least until ML is able to build and maintain entire systems

To me, this sounds a lot like "at least until ML is able to reach level 5 self driving". We don't even know if this is possible yet without AGI (which we also don't know is possible). We can get close, but... that last 1% is a bitch, and it makes all the difference.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#123

Post by WillAdams »

anon7725 wrote: post #118
gitfan86 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but we are in a world of abundance. Most people carry around what would be in 1980 a 10 million dollar supercomputer in their pocket. 10 years from now we might have the equivalent of what today costs 10 million dollars today. Automated farming means what today we consider high end and expensive produce becomes almost free. Automated transportation means that food gets delivered to you for almost nothing. Imagin…

> Yes, but we are in a world of abundance. We have an abundance of inessentials. Housing is still scarce and food is volatile. Health care and education are expensive. Many people are sleeping on the streets or falling into lifestyles of despair. Progress has been applied unevenly and most critically not to the factors of life that form the base of Maslow’s hierarchy.

Housing isn't scarce, it's not evenly allocated.

Lots of properties being kept vacant so as to drive up rents/prop up property values, and it's difficult to get low-income housing built because of NIMBY.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#124

Post by tizio13 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #87
brushfoot wrote: post #20

> I think over time, we’ll see that what many of us really liked about building software deep down wasn’t coding, but intricately imagining the things computers could do for us and then getting them to do it. Spot on. It's a good time for existential reflection: Who would you have been hundreds or thousands of years ago? Who will you be now that technology is radically changing again? There will always be interesting…

> Who would you have been hundreds or thousands of years ago? Given how I grew up ingesting science and science fiction alike, literally attributing half my personality to Star Trek: The Next Generation being on TV during my formative years? It's really hard to tell. I have very little connection to things which were possible before late 19th / early 20th century. In my mind, being thrown back centuries in time, I'd…

Reading your comment made me think that you would enjoy reading the Magic 2.0 series. First book is Off to be the Wizard.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#125

Post by anon7725 »

olalonde wrote: post #101
jwestbury wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we will either live lives of abundance and leisure or face extinction Third option, the workers no longer control the means of production, and we see levels of inequality that make the railroad barons look like they were middle class.

I doubt this third option exists. If the AI(s) lack empathy for us and we are useless to them, they will either exterminate us directly, or indirectly by denying us resources. If they have empathy for us, they will probably let us live good lives. I doubt we will be useful to them, so I doubt there is a scenario where we live miserable lives working for the AI(s).

It’s happening now with closed AI models. The era of open computing may be ending. The models are essentially a new type of computer and they will remain fundamentally closed, accessible only through an API.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#126

Post by pimterry »

rdg42 wrote: post #102
breck wrote: post #26

> OpenAI made the extraordinary and IMO under-discussed decision to use an open API specification format, where every API provider hosts a text file on their website saying how to use their API. Interesting! Somehow I missed this. https://spec.openapis.org/oas/latest.html

Mixing up OpenAI with OpenAPI here ?

No, OpenAI's plugin system uses OpenAPI: https://platform.openai.com/docs/plugins/introduction

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#127

Post by anon7725 »

grugagag wrote: post #33
throwawayai2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when no junior devs are hired for 5 years? Who works their way up to replace the seniors who are leaving?

There’s always a cost to beeing more greedy than you can handle

And what do you think capitalism is all about?

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#128

Post by antibasilisk »

tjr wrote: post #116
crop_rotation wrote: post #103

What happens to social mobility in the post GPT world. Given that knowledge work (not just software) has been one big option for people to climb the social ladder. If the AI can reasonably do all knowledge work in future, the amount of social climbing opportunities will drastically decrease. And no, UBI will not create more opportunities for social mobility. It seems like more and more people will have to compete wit…

What does GPT know beyond what we have (directly or indirectly) taught it? Could it have figured out how to extract five seconds of video from an MPG file if that knowledge had not been made available to it? Would it have invented the MPG format (or something comparable) on its own? Would it have developed the web and HTTP protocol on top of TCP/IP? And so on. Maybe the answer is in fact "yes", or even "yes, and it w…

>Could it have figured out how to extract five seconds of video from an MPG file if that knowledge had not been made available to it?

Could you?

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#129

Post by WillAdams »

olalonde wrote: post #80
Jevon23 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don’t want my productivity to increase. Worst case scenario is that it gets SO good at writing code that software engineering teams are severely downsized or are made obsolete altogether, and I find myself out of a job. I’m not expecting UBI to start falling out of the sky any time soon, especially while there are still manual labor jobs that robots can’t do. Alternative scenario is that individual developer…

I'm sure secretaries had similar thoughts about the arrival of personal computers. Yet, few would argue that computers have made the world a worse place. The truth is people will do less work, or it will feel like it. Most of our ancestors did not have the comfortable software jobs we have today. Life will become easier, products and services will become more abundant. Of course, the transition will be harder for tho…

Yes, but there aren't many secretaries working these days, and certainly the skill set has changed (though I'll never forget the company owner who was surprised when he was called out on promises made to women running a local college and couldn't understand how they could repeat his statements back to him verbatim along w/ the time/date of the phone call in question --- had to explain that they'd all come up through the secretarial pool, and so knew shorthand).

The bottom line is, at some point in time, automation is going to reduce the amount of human work which needs to be done, and render some folks unemployable --- how does society cope with that? Universal Basic Income is the only reasonable suggestion I've yet seen, but doesn't address the age-old problem of socialism --- it only works until one runs out of other people's money.

Back when computers were first announced, taxing CPUs so as to cover benefits for newly unemployed folks was suggested --- can we put that back on the table?

For a fictional take on this see:

https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#130

Post by donkeyd »

coldtea wrote: post #105
DethNinja wrote: post #14

I don’t get the overall doom and gloom towards LLMs on the software field. If you are a software engineer, this will output your productivity ten fold on the upcoming years. Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. In my opinion this technology will be as democratising as the YouTube’s early days. Instead of worrying, learn to work with it. It wil…

> If you are a software engineer, this will output your productivity ten fold on the upcoming years. Now you don’t need to hire junior devs and can just build the product of your dreams with very limited capital. This 10x productivity absense of a 10x expansion of programming industry (which is very unlikely) translates to less developers in general, including senior ones. Even more so in an economy like this... > It…

> This 10x productivity absense of a 10x expansion of programming industry (which is very unlikely)

I think I disagree. If software then becomes 10x cheaper, a lot of use cases that used to be too expensive to build now becomes affordable. At my own job, I think we could easily do 10x the business, because our customers need tons of tooling (for example for energy transition) but we don't have the people (among other problems).

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