It happened to me today: $80/hr writer replaced with ChatGPT • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by cnelsenmilt » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

gaganyaan wrote: post #120

chatgpt_user wrote: post #107

I 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.

Said elsewhere previously[0] but the reason is simple: because the only way we as a society have to distribute a stable supply of food and shelter is for (most) every individual to have a job. "more jobs = more gooder" flows directly from that: "people need food → food requires job → we need jobs".

Changing that has to come before the bullshit jobs are wiped out or there will be an even worse situation.

[0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35470255

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

#282

Post by JohnFen » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:47 PM UTC

flappyeagle wrote: post #174

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> artisans, even digital ones, make society better The word "content," when applied to digital media, usually carries some implications of artlessness. Content is something that fills a container. Music that moves you and changes you is art, and is unlikely to be automated any time soon. Music that plays in an elevator (or fills the silence in an elevator) is Content, and is highly likely to be automated soon.

I don’t know about that. The way I hear it used, every YouTube video is content, even the very good stuff. HBO and Netflix are content. NBA Games are “live content”. It’s just a catch all for digital media

People do use it that way, which is a real shame because -- like the commenter you're replying to -- "content" to me implies something inferior.

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

#283

Post by JohnFen » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 5:49 PM UTC

yakireev wrote: post #242

circlefavshape wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Live performance hasn't gone away. I live outside a village (in Ireland) with around 1000 residents and there's live music in one or other of the pubs 4 nights (or more) a week

Irish trad scene is unique in this regard. There are Irish trad sessions everywhere in the world (I was able to visit some in quite faraway places like Moscow, Istanbul or Santiago de Chile), and in Ireland there are a few in every village, and then some. But that's just it, Irish trad. Frenchies have something similar with balfolk, but not so epic, and while there are other strong European folk scenes, none of them…

Although circleofavshape's observation applies equally well to my part of the US. Even very tiny towns around here have live music multiple nights per week.

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

#284

Post by sssurvey » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

ryzvonusef wrote: post #277

something similar in the art world: https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-image-china-video-game-layof... > Freelance illustrator Amber Yu used to make 3,000 to 7,000 yuan ($430 to $1,000) for every video game poster she drew. Making the promotional posters, published on social media to attract players and introduce new features, was skill-intensive and time-consuming. Once, she spent an entire week completing one illustra…

> Some players told Rest of World that although they don’t mind AI-made avatars and skins, they wouldn’t pay as much for them. “As a consumer, I hope there’s human labor behind my purchase,” said Xie Jinsen, an algorithm engineer in Shanghai, who plays mobile battle games such as Honor of Kings and PUBG Mobile. “Emphasizing how something is made by AI will make people feel it’s cheap.”

Interesting, right now there are plenty of AI generated art as NFT for example. But I am wondering if it is possible that in the future there are so many AI art flooding the internet, where NFT and its gas fees could serve as a good filter for actual authentic human created art. Just a thought..

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

#285

Post by glonq » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 7:06 PM UTC

America [and other countries] sent most of its manufacturing overseas for short-term economic gain, ignoring the damage all those lost jobs would eventually cause.

So I'm not surprised at all that the same thing is happening to some white-collar jobs now, thanks to AI.

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

#286

Post by rrrrrrrrrrrryan » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 7:13 PM UTC

flappyeagle wrote: post #174

rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> artisans, even digital ones, make society better The word "content," when applied to digital media, usually carries some implications of artlessness. Content is something that fills a container. Music that moves you and changes you is art, and is unlikely to be automated any time soon. Music that plays in an elevator (or fills the silence in an elevator) is Content, and is highly likely to be automated soon.

I don’t know about that. The way I hear it used, every YouTube video is content, even the very good stuff. HBO and Netflix are content. NBA Games are “live content”. It’s just a catch all for digital media

Well to the suits at ESPN, HBO, Netflix, and YouTube, those video files are indeed content. They are the contents of their platform.

But if you're in a conversation with an a filmmaker, a musician, a novelist, or a painter, and you try to call their artistic output "content," they might take some offense, because you're kind of reducing their work to a mere consumable product.

Yes, art can be packaged up and put on a platform and distributed and profited off of, or bought and sold on an online store like toasters and dish soap, but that's not the reason it exists - it's form of human expression.

Just as not all digital content is art (e.g. NBA games), and not all digital art is content.

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

#287

Post by Zababa » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 7:22 PM UTC

gaganyaan wrote: post #119

Adapt 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…

> 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.

I don't really think it's true. ChatGPT has been out for a while, and it still takes me the same time to do chores. My commuting still takes as long as it did before.

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

#288

Post by jb3689 » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 7:59 PM UTC

SanderNL wrote: post #199

Havoc wrote: post #175

The part that spooks me is how badly everyone got predictions on what will fall wrong. Remember when creative anything was said to be safe? Stable diffusion. Remember when coding was safe? CoPilot. Makes it really hard to preemptively plan for this short of becoming a plumber The irony is that my own line of work (accounting) was top of the prediction charts and I have yet to see even a hint of AI so that too was ent…

Nothing you'll do will work because everybody will do it. I don't think the market will bear millions of carpenters and plumbers rushing in. My guess is software and everything else will just explode. For now cheap bosses can use GPT, but again everybody is doing that so you will not be competitive in the long run. At some point, every little shop will produce feature-length movies, have amazon-level webshops and you…

I find it more likely that it all just falls apart. All of the novelty gone. All of the integrations unnecessary. The internet nearly pointless, aside from chat rooms and social entertainment, as there is no need to interact with anything but your AI. There will be things that are built and which will significantly impact the real world, but it will only be a matter of time until novelty becomes commodity, interesting becomes mundane. I imagine a bigger global focus on sustainability and research that AI’s cannot facilitate.

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

#289

Post by jb3689 » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 8:12 PM UTC

mistercow wrote: post #46

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.

Well, right now, a manager can’t just write a vague description of what they want into a text field and get back working software twenty seconds later that they can deploy by clicking a button. That may change in the coming years, but the situation right now is that you need a human developer for any nontrivial production use case. That’s not the situation for copywriters. Marketing copy doesn’t have an objective thr…

The difference is really in the importance and stability of accuracy. Ad text can be wishy-washy. Computer programs cannot. An out of place word is okay. An out of place big can compromise the whole solution. We can apply this to other domains to get an idea as to what AI might be good at or might struggle with.

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

#290

Post by jb3689 » Tue, Apr 11, 2023, 8:18 PM UTC

ForestCritter wrote: post #100

blibble wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

200 million people aren't going to want to deal with excrement filled pipes, bug, rat, snake infested crawl spaces, understand all the dangers involed and all the other reasons that plumbers and electricians have such high pay scales.

Not 200 million but certainly plenty enough to impact the financial security of trade jobs. People DIY for fun. Now you’re saying it’s the best way to make a living? Well, sure - let’s give it a go. Who will train all these people? Recall we just put multiple industries out of business with a masterful reference and generation program