AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will • Hacker News Board

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#201

Post by cal85 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:23 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #187

cal85 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What point does it miss?

The degree to which it enables undesirable behavior. A disturbed guy may want to murder everybody in a nightclub, but his chances of success go way up when he has a gun vs. a knife. A company owner may want to automate your job away, but without AI the automation is too expensive and unreliable. The big concern with AI isn't so much the Terminator future, but the Cyberpunk future, where all wealth is concentrated at…

Sounds like you took the headline to mean "There's no concern about AI", but in fact it explicitly highlights an important concern for many: if you fail to keep up, you will lose your job.

I am puzzled so many here seem to have not read the second half of the headline before commenting that the headline missed "the point". The point is in the second half.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#202

Post by regularfry » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:24 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #41

gaoshan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far (super early days, I know) the main thing I've used AI for at work is to write tests for code I'm working on. I get to do the fun bit, solving the problem space, and the AI gets to do the tedious bit (and do it faster than I would). I'm liking at least that level of AI integration.

This is the one that is most scary to me as a user of software. Have the AI write some of the code, sure. But tests have to be correct. Autogenerating a mountain of mostly-correct tests strikes me as a great way of ending up with surprising behavior that is a nightmare to untangle.

I've done a few rounds of "here is a spec. Write tests for it." ... "Here are some tests. Write an implementation which passes them."

That gets me checking the tests in the middle so I can fix them up if I need to.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#203

Post by phkahler » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:24 PM UTC

lolsowrong wrote: post #15

gavinhoward wrote: post #13

I completely disagree. I'm building a business, and this business will be based on excellent software and excellent support for that software. I will refuse to use AI. But instead of AI users taking my job, I'm sure that refusing to use AI will become my differentiator as every AI user becomes more and more like each other. You may think that good AI users will not become so bland, but they will. Human laziness will…

You’re an inspiration. I’m going to open an accounting firm and refuse to use calculators.

The equivalent is more like having your accountants tell chatGPT what to have the software you already have do. You're adding an extra thing in the mix, and while the person will ostensibly be checking the AIs work, they will eventually become dependent on it. When something goes wrong nobody will know how to fix it. You'll miss payroll or something and be absolutely fucked.

As a software engineer, I'm not concerned about people using AI to write simple functions. That's not where my value is - it absolutely incidental to me.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#204

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:24 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #171

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meanwhile Amazon actually operates by people walking to pickup and deliver most packages by hand to be boxed up Given how much Amazon invests in automation that's a pretty gross mischaracterization of what they do.

They have been increasing automation, but over the lifetime of the company it’s a reasonable description for how the majority of all packages where handled. What’s eye opening is the kiva robots only increase the items picked per worker per hour from ~100 to ~300 even though they drastically reduce the amount of walking.

"only"? You just pointed out that they result in 300% increased worker productivity and that's "only"??? Especially when this discussion is based around someone saying they won't use technological productivity enhancers because they want to go the "bespoke" route.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#205

Post by kfkfodlnfkfdk » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:24 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #161

Aerroon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree with that assertion in the first place. Life has improved a lot for most people, but it has improved in ways that you don't really notice. Your car is safer, your apartment is safer, your neighbor's apartment is safer (so it's less likely to burn down yours), there's less crime, there's less hunger, there's more available life saving medicines etc etc. These improvements just aren't all that noti…

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I know people below the poverty line who have access to cheap forms of insulin that didn't even exist fifty years ago because rich people funded the research

They wouldn't even be alive if your lie was true

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#206

Post by ajmurmann » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:24 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #161

Aerroon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I agree with that assertion in the first place. Life has improved a lot for most people, but it has improved in ways that you don't really notice. Your car is safer, your apartment is safer, your neighbor's apartment is safer (so it's less likely to burn down yours), there's less crime, there's less hunger, there's more available life saving medicines etc etc. These improvements just aren't all that noti…

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If you look at any metric like life expectancy, literacy rates, child mortality, things have gotten so much better. (One exception is the US where life expectancy dropped. As was heavily discussed online the last days, this is mostly due to gun violence, traffic accidents and drug abuse which IMO are largely cultural and not due to automation)

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#207

Post by dahart » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:25 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #189

dahart wrote: post #84

At some level it’s tautological. Initially I had a similar negative reaction other commenters had, but I think I’m deciding I like the people framing. Obviously this is not an either-or. It’s not a question of AI vs people, it’s both AI+people. But only people are making the choices. People are building AI, people who can use AI will choose to use it, and people who run businesses will choose to allow it and/or incor…

Comparing to outsourcing or, even less fitting, immigration is a terrible analogy. Those jobs and their income go to other humans. Other humans who will consume goods and services, this is especially true for immigration. I'd also argue that offshoring is morally positive because it moves the work and associated income to where people need it more, that's why the labor is cheaper there Both automation and global move…

Okay, it’s not a perfect analogy, but from the perspective of a business owner, the choice is to put money into something expensive like local human labor, or something cheaper whether it’s remote labor or automation of some kind. Lots of tools have been accused of stealing jobs over the years, from factory machines to vehicles to computers. In that sense, I’m only borrowing an analogy with a long rich tradition.

The wealth concentration difference between labor and machines is one of the systemic outcomes, it’s one of the consequences that business owners don’t necessarily intend to cause, it’s just an emergent property of certain choices, right? This is precisely one of the reasons we need to recognize that this is a choice, because the consequences of the choice will matter.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#208

Post by giaour » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

marcusjt wrote: post #135

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the difference, right now at least, is that people will go, "well, I'm not sure about this so I think we should look it up, but this is what I think" - the AI doesn't do that. It lies in the same exact way it tells truths. How are you supposed to make decisions based off of that information?

Does it lie? Or just get things wrong sometimes? Lying requires knowledge that what you are saying is not the truth, and usually there's a motive for doing so. I don't think ChatGPT is there yet... or is it?

Technically, what ChatGPT is doing is bullshitting because it doesn't have any knowledge of or concern for truthfulness.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#209

Post by golergka » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

ajmurmann wrote: post #189

dahart wrote: post #84

At some level it’s tautological. Initially I had a similar negative reaction other commenters had, but I think I’m deciding I like the people framing. Obviously this is not an either-or. It’s not a question of AI vs people, it’s both AI+people. But only people are making the choices. People are building AI, people who can use AI will choose to use it, and people who run businesses will choose to allow it and/or incor…

Comparing to outsourcing or, even less fitting, immigration is a terrible analogy. Those jobs and their income go to other humans. Other humans who will consume goods and services, this is especially true for immigration. I'd also argue that offshoring is morally positive because it moves the work and associated income to where people need it more, that's why the labor is cheaper there Both automation and global move…

> However, automation allows for the owner of the goods of production to retain much more of the value created.

Owners of means of productions are typically american people with 401k or other pensions funds. There's nothing wrong to provide good returns for regular people.

Re: AI won't steal your job, people leveraging AI will

#210

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 3:26 PM UTC

alex_sf wrote: post #197

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was too vague I think. The only place where I can see it being acceptable right now is code because I have a whole other system that will call out failures - I can rely on my IDE and my own expertise to hopefully catch issues when they appear. Outside of the code use case, what should I rely on ChatGPT for that won't have me also looking for the information somewhere else? I suppose subjective soft things, like wri…

Again, the idea that you should rely on any single source for information is the issue. Nothing changes with ChatGPT other than the apparent expectation that it is infallible.

So what are the use cases that I would use ChatGPT to find information that would speed up my work but would still require me to verify the information? If nothing changes with ChatGPT what is its use as a tool (assuming you want to use it to get information)?