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

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

#81

Post by Imnimo »

>he’s a marketer who outsources the majority of his copy and content writing to me.

So is this like SEO content marketing? Without understanding the nature of the job, it's hard to know what conclusions to draw. If the most important part of the job was just "write something that will end up on the first page of Google search results", than I can totally believe ChatGPT can replace that. If it's something where the most important part is that the reader enjoy the piece, I'm a bit more skeptical. ChatGPT is good at a lot of things, but it doesn't really produce engaging writing very well.

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

#82

Post by blibble »

QuiDortDine wrote: post #77
abtinf wrote: 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.

wait until it starts training on its own output

and the spammers realise they can influence its output by producing more spam

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

#83

Post by gkoberger »

searealist wrote: post #64
LeoPanthera wrote: post #61

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.

I feel like that only happens when X is a thing they're trying to promote, such as "I used to be a liberal but now they're too woke, so now I'm voting Trump."

But for this, there's no upside. They aren't promoting anything. In fact, they're withdrawing their promotion of something with no alternative. I guess I just don't get your point.

I think a lot of people believe humans are superior (currently, they are!), and genuinely are going to be blindsided by the fact that creativity isn't a uniquely human trait.

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

#84

Post by danielvaughn »

dmreedy wrote: post #55
pulvinar wrote: post #17

For coding I've been using it as an assistant, not a replacement. I don't see why writers couldn't do the same, and be more cost effective and produce higher quality output than either alone.

The author of the comment did not choose to leave on some sort of anthropocentric principle, rejecting the idea of using AI in a Butlerian polemic: they were fired by their client and replaced wholly for a fraction of the price. The only move would be to convert to a volume play and leverage the automation. Maybe that helps, maybe it doesn't; unlike a lot of historical automation to do with making physical widgets, w…

Regardless of what happens, I'm honestly just very curious to see how this all plays out, despite being nervous. What a time to be alive.

I do think that "replace coders with AI" poses a much more formidable challenge simply due to the fact that software typically requires deterministic output, especially for critical systems.

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

#85

Post by hammyhavoc »

Imnimo wrote: post #81

>he’s a marketer who outsources the majority of his copy and content writing to me. So is this like SEO content marketing? Without understanding the nature of the job, it's hard to know what conclusions to draw. If the most important part of the job was just "write something that will end up on the first page of Google search results", than I can totally believe ChatGPT can replace that. If it's something where the m…

But what about Google penalizing generated content? It's an incredibly bold assumption to assume that this can continue. It's so thin and poor quality.

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

#86

Post by jabbany »

Reminds me of this video about automation of mental labor (and this was made back in 2014, way before any of of the LLM stuff of the modern era): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

While not all the example predictions in the video were accurate, I think the point about automation as a displacement of mental labor is real. At the end of the day, a lot of white collar work is really not that "valuable" from a production standpoint. And while the easy way is to blame either technology or those it replaces, the crux of the problem is really in society and how individuals make a living.

Society needs to be ready for a future where most people will not be able to do meaningfully differentiated work ---where even if you're thrown into higher education, most of the jobs available are still what would be considered as "entry level" ones.

Also, this is also somewhat an attestation to Moravec's paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravec%27s_paradox), where "intellectual" tasks like writing are easier to automate compared to "actuation" tasks like fetching food, driving it around, and placing it in the right place (re: Doordash).

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

#87

Post by gkoberger »

searealist wrote: post #80
gkoberger wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Again, could be fake, but if you had a 3 y/o and your salary cut to $0, you might panic and go for one of the few jobs where you can start making money instantly w/o having to interview while you look for more work.

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

#88

Post by searealist »

gkoberger wrote: post #83
searealist wrote: post #64

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.

I feel like that only happens when X is a thing they're trying to promote, such as "I used to be a liberal but now they're too woke, so now I'm voting Trump." But for this, there's no upside. They aren't promoting anything. In fact, they're withdrawing their promotion of something with no alternative. I guess I just don't get your point. I think a lot of people believe humans are superior (currently, they are!), and…

Some people lie for fun.

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

#89

Post by codersfocus »

QuiDortDine wrote: post #77
abtinf wrote: 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.

With how rich YouTubers / influencers are getting, I think relationship building / becoming a celebrity will become more and more necessary

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

#90

Post by hammyhavoc »

danielvaughn wrote: post #84
dmreedy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author of the comment did not choose to leave on some sort of anthropocentric principle, rejecting the idea of using AI in a Butlerian polemic: they were fired by their client and replaced wholly for a fraction of the price. The only move would be to convert to a volume play and leverage the automation. Maybe that helps, maybe it doesn't; unlike a lot of historical automation to do with making physical widgets, w…

Regardless of what happens, I'm honestly just very curious to see how this all plays out, despite being nervous. What a time to be alive. I do think that "replace coders with AI" poses a much more formidable challenge simply due to the fact that software typically requires deterministic output, especially for critical systems.

IMO, the quality is demonstrably poor at present, I don't think any dev worth their salt is going to be concerned when at best, it's only what people could have done with boilerplate tooling twenty years ago, but even that was superior.
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