> This client is my main source of income, he’s a marketer who outsources the majority of his copy and content writing to me.
Yep, ChatGPT can produce bullshit faster+cheaper than humans produce bullshit.
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
#112I started with him at my normal rate of $50/hour which he has voluntarily increased to $80/hour after I’ve been consistently providing good work for him. So the client paid almost double to keep better talent, just in case, without prompting, then suddenly didn't care about talent? Makes zero sense.
It makes perfect sense for people who are willing to accept that ChatGPT/GPT-4 is a revolutionary technology that will upend lots of jobs/people/companies, just as horse coaches / coachmen in the early 1900's got pay raises just before being out of a job. For people who are in denial, it will make no sense. https://blogs.microsoft.com/today-in-tech/day-horse-lost-job...
Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
#113This is a bit off-topic, but browsing through that subreddit, I've noticed that the quality of comments and posts is amazingly high. Not necessarily in terms of what each person is talking about, but just the style of prose and how well written each post is. It makes sense that a subreddit dedicated to writers would have well-written posts, but its interesting to see.
Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
#114I'm a technical writer at a FAANG and I'm terrified about LLMs taking my job.
I don't worry (yet) that LLMs can produce better docs than I can. A big part of my role is speaking to people to understand what users need to learn, then designing an organization for documentation around that. Writing is of course a big part, but understanding what to write and what not to write is often even more important.
Instead, I worry about a situation like the one in this post, where some exec thinks that AI can get you XX% of the way there for much less money. I think they would be mistaken, but what hurts my case is that it's inherently extremely difficult to demonstrate the value of technical writers quantitatively.
Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
#115For 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.
If a team of five people with five "assistants" does the things that previously took a team of ten people, that means that five of these people got replaced by automation.
Or maybe that Como at will produce twice as much software. Or maybe 1.5x as much and only two will be replaced.
Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
#116If 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 surgeons get replaced by better robotics hardware (more accurate cutting techniques than a human hand) and better AI software. The premise that a more experience surgeon is a lot better than a newbie surgeon holds true. How do you become an experienced surgeon? By seeing a lot of cases and knowing what to do when things don't go as planned.
What does AI do? It learns over time by seeing more and more cases.
Will it replaced a true star surgeon within the next decades? Likely not. But how many of us have access to the world's best surgeon? Or the world's top 10 or top 1000? Vast majority see one who is local and good enough (or have no choice if you land in an ER with an accident). Those are highly skilled highly trained positions earning high pay.
If you asked me a year ago I would have recommended kids to go into studying medicine and become a surgeon as that surely wouldn't be replaced by computers.
Today I am not so sure this will be a profession for the majority of cases (that don't get to see the highest of skilled) even in 10 or 15 years from now.
Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Really depends on the type of output. For content marketing that most people are just going to skim over anyway (aka is just going to be used for blogspam/content farming, which is what it sounds like the linked writer was doing for this cli…
I don’t really like any of them but store brand colas definitely don’t taste like coke
And aren't much cheaper either...
Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Stephen King is a weird example because there are lots of working writers in the store brand Stephen King market.
Only they don't write like Stephen King. And if an AI was trained to do it (by obviously using SK books), Stephen King would probably sue.
Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
#119Adapt or die.
Not actually, of course. We need a social safety net that lets people adapt without fear of starvation/homelessness/etc. But all of this bitching about "oh no, things are changing" just comes across as "oh no, this newfangled horseless carriage threatens my livelihood as a buggy whip manufacturer". Posts like this just make my eyes roll:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35492730
We're headed towards a future where all of the drudgery is automated away and we can be free to pursue all of the hobbies that we never have time for because we're too busy working on shit that doesn't really matter.
Accept it. Love it. It's happening even if you don't, so you might as well.
Re: It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT
#120I wrote about this same exact thing (on a throwaway so my other employees don't see this) from the perspective of the employer. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35484643 ---- I'm writing on a throwaway account for obvious reasons. I run a mid sized software company that does a mix of software consulting and saas. Quite common these days. I want to share a real story about how chatgpt eliminated a marketing job. I…
This is a good thing. One more bullshit job eliminated that only exists to make the numbers go up.
This will be hard, but as a society, we need to examine the entire reasoning behind "jobs" and why "more jobs = more gooder". The entire foundation of that line of thought is fundamentally flawed.