Live data from Hacker News

It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

old.reddit.com

71–80 of 331 posts

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since it's obvious, could you explain why you think that?

It's written in the frame of "I used to be a huge believer of not X, but now I learned X is true! And that gives me credibility!". No one talks like this except people trying to manipulate you.

To be fair they claim to be a marketing writer so that would check out with their story...

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#72
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But at some point a human will add so little value that they're not worth the price.

We can only hope that when this day comes, we end up with fully automated gay space communism. But the reality will probably be that plumbers and builders become the next tech bros telling us to learn tiling. Just go with the flow I guess. If tech becomes automated, move to the next thing.

what happens to the wages of plumbers and electricians when 200 million people start retraining to be them?

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#73

If AI output is 60% as good as a person, but costs 1/1000th the price... what decision maker is going to justify paying 1000x more for 40% more quality? We're really in for it. What if there was a cheeseburger that was 50% as good as McDonalds but was only a nickel? That'd be real bad for the McD's share price.

This is already the bargain with intellectual property. What if you can get writing 50% as good as Stephen King? Doesn't matter, because the winner takes all and books are infinitely copyable. What if you can run a 400m in 80% of the world record time? Doesn't matter, because you'll only be paid a pittance. What if copilot can write code with only 50% more bugs than an engineer? Doesn't matter if each bug costs an average of tens of millions.

I don't think it's good vs bad, but quality vs volume. If your output is already able to be duplicated at low-to-zero cost then quality is important.

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#74

If AI output is 60% as good as a person, but costs 1/1000th the price... what decision maker is going to justify paying 1000x more for 40% more quality? We're really in for it. What if there was a cheeseburger that was 50% as good as McDonalds but was only a nickel? That'd be real bad for the McD's share price.

What if a flight only cost a nickel, but there was a 40% chance it blew up? Not all errors are equal. Sometimes 99% as good isn't even close to good enough. But, yes, for most things 60% for 1/100th the price, is going to cut it.

I’d say you’re flying Peruvian air in the 1970s

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#76
post #73

If AI output is 60% as good as a person, but costs 1/1000th the price... what decision maker is going to justify paying 1000x more for 40% more quality? We're really in for it. What if there was a cheeseburger that was 50% as good as McDonalds but was only a nickel? That'd be real bad for the McD's share price.

This is already the bargain with intellectual property. What if you can get writing 50% as good as Stephen King? Doesn't matter, because the winner takes all and books are infinitely copyable. What if you can run a 400m in 80% of the world record time? Doesn't matter, because you'll only be paid a pittance. What if copilot can write code with only 50% more bugs than an engineer? Doesn't matter if each bug costs an av…

> What if you can run a 400m in 80% of the world record time?

congratulations, you are now the new world record holder ;)

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#77
post #65

> This client is my main source of income, he’s a marketer who outsources the majority of his copy and content writing to me. Today he emailed saying that although he knows AI’s work isn’t nearly as good as mine, he can’t ignore the profit margin. A core assumption is that his client will succeed with this change. Only time will tell. A thousand different outcomes are possible: the downstream client is upset by the r…

As horrified as I am for people whose jobs will be lost (including mine, quite possibly), "content" is such a plague on humanity I'm glad it will soon be devalued into the ground. Moutains of useless tweets and blog posts will be rendered meaningless when ChatGPT has all the answers. Dust to dust.

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's written in the frame of "I used to be a huge believer of not X, but now I learned X is true! And that gives me credibility!". No one talks like this except people trying to manipulate you.

To be fair they claim to be a marketing writer so that would check out with their story...

[deleted]

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#79
So much content marketing is already churned out by contractors with zero domain knowledge. This doesn't surprise me much.

It's sad to see humans lose their jobs to automation. But (without knowing much about the details) if the company thinks they can automate what this person was doing with AI, it was kind of a bullshit job [1] to begin with.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT

#80

Obvious fake story.

It might be fake, but I don't see why it's "obviously" fake. This marketer is likely helping people with SEO. Search engines (allegedly) reward frequent, unique, backlinked content on a subject. Client is a dentist? Write a blog post a week about dentist-related things. Link to his other clients posts for backlinks, and everyone wins. She says he's a freelance marketer, and subcontracts out to her. If nobody is reall…

Or it could be 1 fake post in a sea of throw away accounts fabricating stories on reddit for fun and karma. Or maybe it's a real story and they really did give up writing and start driving for doordash over this. You decide.
Post reply on HN