Live data from Hacker News

Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 177 posts

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#41

Faster code writing still requires people who know what the code should do, what it should look like, etc, like you if it's true what you say you're capable of. It sounds like you sharpened the right skills: how the code should work, and didn't waste time, ie. practicing being faster with a keyboard. Now you're more a developer, and less a typist, that's all. We still use engineers to design bridges, despite much of…

I agree with this take. Moreover, it takes a seasoned software architect to verify that the code generated is correct, clean, and idiomatic. Someone still needs to shepherd the machine.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#42
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the people streaming Chess games to millions are particularly worried.

But they're not competing with the chess skills of a computer.

They are, for the first dozen moves of most games.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#43

These GPT programs literally don't know what the code does (or the meaning of their output in general). They are Large Language Models. They just know (roughly) how to make responses in a particular language that make sense (english, C++, wingdings). They do not understand the "sense that is made" however. This requires subject matter experts, like yourself, to use and implement. These LLM are tools. They are not sen…

you're right, those things aren't sentient. but, they sure aren't markov chains, either. dismissing them as bags of numbers without agency is extremely shortsighted.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#44
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the people streaming Chess games to millions are particularly worried.

But they're not competing with the chess skills of a computer.

Nor are any of the leading chess players?

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#45

I have had similar reaction as you. It makes a lot of skills obsolete. I myself have been pondering the implications on the wider society. And I have found it to be great for almost all the problems I threw at it. To those saying it will enable them to solve more problems, yes that is correct. It will give everyone "wings", but once everyone has wings the industry will be so different in terms of wage and employment.…

What careers are you thinking of?

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#46

I feel your anguish, but I think you're being defeatist. There will still be a source of income in fixing the AI generated code. It won't be as fun though.

Maintenance maintenance maintenance… Software needs to evolve and be fixed. Bugs appearing after the fact are not something new afaik. And maintenance by the way.

Can you change the program to put a cover sheet on the TPS report? ;-)

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#47

I have had similar reaction as you. It makes a lot of skills obsolete. I myself have been pondering the implications on the wider society. And I have found it to be great for almost all the problems I threw at it. To those saying it will enable them to solve more problems, yes that is correct. It will give everyone "wings", but once everyone has wings the industry will be so different in terms of wage and employment.…

> If your age and circumstance allow, you should think whether a career change is possible. Not a hard change right now, but atleast explore what options might be available. I am exploring the same myself.

I’ve been doing this for years, and I have the least confidence I’ve ever had that I’ll ever pull it off. Credentials are expensive as hell and time consuming to obtain, and if massive wage loss is a concern, there aren’t many careers you’ll be safe starting over in. Anything “interesting”, but low paying will likely be affected in the same way software is.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#48

These GPT programs literally don't know what the code does (or the meaning of their output in general). They are Large Language Models. They just know (roughly) how to make responses in a particular language that make sense (english, C++, wingdings). They do not understand the "sense that is made" however. This requires subject matter experts, like yourself, to use and implement. These LLM are tools. They are not sen…

They don't have to be sentient. It doesn't need to be better at creating software than humans. It needs to be cheap and good enough. Most apps and websites are pretty similar, eg, blogs, storefronts. We have whitelabel apps and websites already, they're about to become a lot more customisable by a lot more people.

It's the same as IKEA, it's not as good quality as a handcrafted table from the 1800s. But it works well for most situations and most people.

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#49
post #45

I have had similar reaction as you. It makes a lot of skills obsolete. I myself have been pondering the implications on the wider society. And I have found it to be great for almost all the problems I threw at it. To those saying it will enable them to solve more problems, yes that is correct. It will give everyone "wings", but once everyone has wings the industry will be so different in terms of wage and employment.…

What careers are you thinking of?

Being an HN pundit obviously, posting the spiciest of hot takes

user: crop_rotation

created: 4 days ago

karma: 305

Re: Tell HN: I stopped caring about personal development in tech after seeing GPT-4

#50
As an AI researcher: don't forget that we're at the peak of the hype-trend: a lot of what LLMs can do looks extremely impressive, but most of it falls apart on more detailed inspection. Unless you ask about mundane things, they will tend to get a lot of tiny (and not so tiny) details wrong. At the very best, these systems will allow us to automate some boiler plate things, but they're not good enough to do complicated stuff without lots of supervision. And what's even more important: I think a lot of people look at the current impressive steps and think "oh wow, if it continues at this pace we'll have the Singularity by autumn". But the thing is: we're not able to keep this pace of progress. What you're seeing now is as good as it gets (in terms of big breakthroughs, there will still be lots of small and medium ones). The next few months (and years?) will see a ton of incremental improvements and many, many, many people trying to apply these new technologies. But I personally (as a decently successful AI researcher who's been part of these developments for over 10 years) don't see a way forward to keep making many of the big strides we've been making. As an analogy: we're having a Bitcoin moment: imagine the first blockchain was just released for the first time: now, there'll be lots of people trying to understand the tech, come up with their own variants, make some (fundamental?) improvements. But the actual fundamental tech/idea is out now, and it's not really going to change much.

TL;DR: I think your job is safe.

Post reply on HN