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

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

#321

Post by sharemywin »

the_doctah wrote: post #253
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please give some examples then. I've found the GPT-4 version to be remarkably accurate, and when it makes mistakes it's not hard to spot them. For example, I commented last week that I've found ChatGPT to be a great tool for managing my task list, and for whatever reason the "verbal" back-and-forth works much better for my brain than a simple checklist-based todo app: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35390644 . B…

For a time, I was attempting to use it for game advice during my recent playthrough of Demon's Souls remake (What's the best build for X? What's the best weapon for X?). I asked ChatGPT where to find the NPC The Filthy Woman in a certain level. ChatGPT answered that that NPC doesn't exist, and perhaps I had the wrong game? That NPC most certainly does exist. I was also using it to generate some Java code for a bit. T…

I think these type of errors gets mostly resolved with a search plugin.

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

#322

Post by asdfman123 »

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…

Counterpoint: one thing I think AI will be able to do really well early on is refactoring.

Code is often ugly because humans just don't have the time to make it look nice. But if I had a good AI tool, I could make my code beautiful.

This is hardly the first time humans have invented a tool to make complicated tasks easy. The sweet spot has always been knowing how to use the tools to maximize your productivity, but also knowing how to do it the hard way too in case something breaks.

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

#323

Post by weatherlite »

onion2k wrote: post #181
tricksforfree wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often are calculators confidently wrong?

AI is confidently wrong about a lot of things, but that doesn't mean it's useless. It means you need to verify what it generates. Doing that for code is much easier than prose. AI that produces wrong code is immediately and obviously wrong. It can't really fool you. It's easy to test. You can even ask AI to write tests for the code it produces to demonstrate it's correct.

Tests help but tests can be wrong as well, if this was all so easy we wouldn't have any bugs.

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

#324

Post by justinzollars »

I'm seeing a lot of AI doomerism. I'm incredibly optimistic about AI, recently ChatGTP helped me debug a Neovim/Microsoft Language Server bug related to symlinks - I couldn't have done it on my own but asking the right questions helped me tease out a production bug related with gopls.

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

#325

Post by jakubmazanec »

actsasbuffoon wrote: post #151
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't count the number of times I've listened to someone argue their answer must be right because they got it from the calculator. Answers from calculators are always right! But the human may have asked the wrong question.

There are a bunch of well-known areas where popular calculators tend to give incorrect answers: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/example... It’s mostly fine until it isn’t. AI will probably operate in the same capacity. We already have so much incorrect information out there that’s part of our pop culture. Even down to things like the fact that Darth Vader never said, “Luke, I am your father,” and…

I have another theory about all those quotes. Regarding that Darth Vader quote, if quoted exactly, i.e. "I am you father", it isn't immediately obvious the quote is from Star Wars. "Luke" gives you a context. Sherlock and Kirk quotes are synthesized from what the characters actually said, and arguably the precise wording doesn't matter, because the point of the quote is to bring up images of the characters and situations, not of those specific words.

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

#326

Post by ajmurmann »

baremetal wrote: post #248
fnimick wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't be serious. The vast majority of the "means of production" are owned by the top 1-5% of the country. Sure, I have a 401k, I have 0.000001% of Amazon, that doesn't make me an owner.

You are very likely in the top 5% of earners. Top 5% of Earners $342,987[1] [1] https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-incom...

Income isn't wealth though. It can lead to future wealth, but not if your source of income will go way which is exactly the topic of discussion with automation.

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

#327

Post by dahart »

Herval_freire wrote: post #315
dahart wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s fair, you’re totally right. But, this is exposing why the drug addict analogy isn’t a great analogy relative to use of AI. I went along with it to find common ground, but I don’t believe the existence of drug addicts are evidence that we lack any choice when it comes to building, deploying, or using AI, like @Herval_freire implied. Do you? I think we do have the freedom to exercise caution, or regulate the use…

We lack choice in aggregate. As an individual you have the choice of doing a drug. If I talk about a population of people and I introduce highly addictive drugs to a population of people, then it's almost a guarantee that part of that population will get addicted. In this sense it is not a choice. For AI, if I introduce AI to a population of people then for sure part of the population will exploit and use AI. Logical…

We can and do choose to regulate addictive drugs, and we can similarly choose to regulate AI if necessary, right?

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

#328

Post by Herval_freire »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #167
Herval_freire wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not healthy in my opinion. A drug addict doesn't exactly have a choice when he uses drugs. Aspects of human behavior in aggregate are so predictable it's basically deterministic. If AI one day matches or surpasses human intelligence it is obvious humanity will exploit that AI as it already is doing now. There is no actual "choice" here. Just an illusion of it.

We've changed collective human behavior before though, outlawed slavery etc.

This is a good point. The civil war like the drug war though are choices made after an inevitable plunge onto the predictable path. Both choices had a high cost and were incredibly hard to make.

It was also predictably a delayed response with varying levels of limited effectiveness.

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

#329

Post by teawrecks »

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…

"Sure, robot assembly units have a much higher throughput with a much lower error rate and virtually zero risk for injury, but they lack a 'human touch'. That will be our differentiating factor."

Even if one manufacturer gets away with this argument, it fundamentally hinges on them being the minority. The question then becomes who will be the lucky few to get away with this argument? And what will the vast majority choose to do instead?

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

#330

Post by Herval_freire »

JohnFen wrote: post #183
Herval_freire wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the progress, current trendline point to a possible future where AI content is indistinguishable from the "human touch". AI content may even be preferable and better than human produces content. People are reacting to AI as it is right now without projecting where this technology is going in the future. Given the rate of progress in the past year, the scenario I describe is a possibility that is insane not to c…

> Given the rate of progress in the past year, the scenario I describe is a possibility that is insane not to consider. Personally speaking, there's no point to me considering that. If what you are projecting turns out to be true, all it means is that there no place for me anymore.

Why? What should affect whether something is considered is it's likelihood of happening. If AI has a 99% chance of replacing you, then you'd rather consider the 1% alternative simply because there's no place for you anymore?

If AI will replace you there are steps that can be taken to prevent it from replacing you. This involves things like Resistance or changing what you do into something that can't be as easily replaced.

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