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Post-GPT Computing

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Re: Post-GPT Computing

#131

Post by pfdietz »

Jevon23 wrote: post #46
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…

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…

Or, with software so much easier to create, so much more software is created, and demand for SW engineers increases.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#132

Post by nopinsight »

throwawayai2 wrote: post #24
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…

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

By the late 2020s, it's entirely possible that a "weaker" AGI will emerge. Consequently, there may be much less need for senior developers as well. However, that could be among the least of our concerns if we cannot reliably align AI with human interests by then.

Date Weakly General AI is Publicly Known https://www.metaculus.com/questions/3479/date-weakly-general...

Date of Artificial General Intelligence https://www.metaculus.com/questions/5121/date-of-artificial-...

The latter includes this criterion: "Able to get top-1 strict accuracy of at least 90.0% on interview-level problems found in the APPS benchmark introduced by Dan Hendrycks, Steven Basart et al."

The APPS benchmark: https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.09938

Note that the predicted date of "stronger" AGI has moved quite a lot since GPT-4 is revealed, from late 2030s to 2033 at this moment.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#133

Post by tablespoon »

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 happens to social mobility in the post GPT world[?]

If the technology pans out the way the techno-enthusiasts hope it will, upward social mobility will be nearly eliminated... unless there's some kind of successful Luddite revolution against the technology and the people that own it. But that's not going to happen: there are all kinds of social pressure against revolution, as well as strict gun control in most places. Anyone who tries to resist their obsolescence will soon find themselves either ridiculed and condemned or in jail.

Of course, downward social mobility will accelerate, and be celebrated by idiot technologists who just want to build tech, and don't really care to think about the consequences of the technologies they build on real people.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#134

Post by antibasilisk »

janetacarr wrote: post #115

I could just be rationalizing here, but I think AI will be illegal soon. The idea of banning AI to protect many well paid middle-class jobs will be a slam dunk for any politician. There will be no Post-GPT computing world, just the Turing police and console cowgirls.

Given nascent geopolitical competition, I don't think the west can afford this.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#135

Post by Nemi »

throwawayai2 wrote: post #24
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…

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

Is there a scenario where just the people that REALLY love programming start in the field? Could this be a situation where you reduce the field of programmers to only those that are truly passionate about programming, thus making the people left in the field the cream of the crop? We have all worked with individuals that are clearly in the field because they think they can make a lot of money and don’t give a crap about doing a good job. Can we envision a world where these people go on to another field instead of clogging up this one?

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#136

Post by donkeyd »

nunez wrote: post #92
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…

Yeah, and look at where YouTube is now. Millions of creators grinding for pennies while the lucky ones that got in early and made it rake in the profits. I think success in tech is going to become extremely pyramidal in the coming years. This is a huge shame, as this was one of the only fields out there where you could make a really good living without going to the "right" school for years and years and years.

> while the lucky ones that got in early and made it rake in the profits

In my niche(s), I still see new Youtubers pop up all the time that gain large followings and turn Youtube into a full-time job. Sure, they don't all become rich, but many have started earning enough to drive Teslas, so it's definitely not pennies.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#137

Post by CuriouslyC »

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…

As AI progresses, job options will reduce to various flavors of people who tell AI what to do, or tell other people what to do, or do physical things that machines are bad at. Over time that will reduce to executives, "architects" of various sorts, social media entertainers and manual laborers/direct customer service. The entire "middle" portion of most organizations that exist to connect the people making the high level decisions wit h the boots on the ground is going to disappear.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#138

Post by nh23423fefe »

Jevon23 wrote: post #46
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…

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…

pretty incoherent. A better tool is bad because someone else might demonstrate that you're lazy?

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#139

Post by antibasilisk »

dougdonohoe wrote: post #84

On the one hand, I think a lot of what ChatGPT can do is pretty amazing and a bit scary as a software engineer. On the other hand, I look at the projects I've done recently and throughout my career and find it hard to see how something that can solve bite-sized problems can tackle a software project that takes months to come to fruition. I'm currently working as an engineer doing a mix of kubernetes, cloud, Golang, b…

Perhaps for brownfield work you're right, but I suspect greenfield will not suffer from the same issues, since they're usually an artefact of things done to accommodate human-limits on finances, time and integration with heteromorphic systems.

Re: Post-GPT Computing

#140

Post by JoeJonathan »

gitfan86 wrote: post #98
nunez wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and look at where YouTube is now. Millions of creators grinding for pennies while the lucky ones that got in early and made it rake in the profits. I think success in tech is going to become extremely pyramidal in the coming years. This is a huge shame, as this was one of the only fields out there where you could make a really good living without going to the "right" school for years and years and years.

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…

I fear you haven't spent much time in the places in this "world of abundance" where people live in abject misery. I'm currently in Brazil, where some 20% of the population lives on less than $5.50 per day and 30% of families don't have enough food. And it's not for want of agricultural production.
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