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If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

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Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#191
post #34
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The common narrative is that Tim Cook was the organizer and glue behind Steve Jobs's vision for years, and "just took over a big functional company and made it continue do what it did before" is a funny way to describe the tear Apple has been on for the last ~15 years.

> "just took over a big functional company and made it continue do what it did before" is a funny way to describe the tear Apple has been on for the last ~15 years. Compared to Facebook, yes Apple just continued doing what they did under Steve while Facebook went from being a small private site for Harvard students to being a global tech giant. I don't see why you would equate those two.

I'm not arguing the two are equivalent, just saying that the description of Tim Cook is needlessly diminishing.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty comical to read - "no no no, it can't predict THOSE tokens!!!" XD

Making intelligent decisions != predicting tokens. Current AI only resembles intelligence to those that don't understand it. It's a tool that should operate with the guidance of a human.

Sufficiently advanced token prediction is indistinguishable from intelligence.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#193
post #69

Software engineer here trying to start a startup. The amount of business advice GPT-4 has given me is immeasurable. I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Kind of like an AI CEO advising me on what to do next.

Can you give a specific example? I’m curious if it was useful because of the AI’s skills, or perhaps it was the conversation itself that helped, like in rubber duck debugging[1] or journaling. In any case, interested to hear more details. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

Marketing text. As an engineer I can write factual statements, but can't spice it up the way a marketer could. I can give GPT-4 some basic facts then have it generate multiple examples, then pick one.

Generating plan names.

Customer interview recruitment strategies.

Brainstorming a customer interview plan.

Mock customer interviews.

Analytics. This is more technical but it's created SQL queries to understand all kinds of metrics. Also helping to understand the results.

I'm aware of the hallucination problem so I'll usually check other sources for anything important.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#194

Software engineer here trying to start a startup. The amount of business advice GPT-4 has given me is immeasurable. I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Kind of like an AI CEO advising me on what to do next.

I’m not doubting that you have found it helpful. I just wish people would be more judicious than making up numbers like “10x”. Everything can’t be “10x”.

In my case, if you are talking about startups specifically, its true. I've been an engineer now for 15 years. About 5 years ago, long before LLMs became a thing, I got to the point where I stopped using stack overflow and google for most things, only using them for the hardest, most complex questions. Thats how I use LLMs nowdays for technical things, which is not often. Business however is new to me.

As a solo founder, i've got to be the ceo, marketer, product manager, customer service rep, tech support person and a bunch of other things i've not previously done. GPT-4 is great at guiding me on these things. In a typical 2 person CEO/CTO founded early stage startup, the CEO might be doing these non technical things until the business gets enough funding to hire their first employees.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#195
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Let me just use a glorified autocomplete instead of learning a subject domain or craft” seems like the opposite of hacker spirit and curiosity.

Do you feel the same about using search engines to learn literally anything? What about youtube learning channels? What about the documentation? You know, hackers from the past could write amazing things in assembly using only an outdated book on a somewhat related subject (if any at all). We have invented internet to share knowledge as quickly as possible. ChatGPT is the next step. What does a true Scotsman, sorry,…

The key word is “learn”!

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Let me just use a glorified autocomplete instead of learning a subject domain or craft” seems like the opposite of hacker spirit and curiosity.

HN has plenty of bad takes, and this is up there with the worst. OP is obviously learning from the LLM. What is with this knee-jerk reflex to complain about AI regardless of whether your complaint makes any sense?

It sounds like OP consults an LLM on each next step. “Apply pressure and move the brush to the right” is not how you learn to draw, “press the 44th key counting from the left” is not how you learn to play piano. Not to say LLM can’t be used to learn things, like any tool, with its own strengths and weaknesses.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The root for this is a comment that urges to boycott some persons startup because I didn't write it so don't care about the "root for this". I quoted what I was commenting upon: "Why do you think it is anti-curiosity to use LLMs?". > Yes, I find that commentary extremely inappropriate. Feel free to do so. Has nothing to do with my comments and it's not a responce to my arguments. It's sidelining them and trying to…

You do enter into a context when you decide responding within a thread - let's see if we can forget this. Your sentiment is that this is stack overflow c/p style business development. I understand this as: You receive instructions from a third party entity and carry them out verbatim. An because that to use a LLM that is anti-curiosity. Let's delve into that, shall we? 1. Following instructions verbatim is as old as…

In my comment I objected to “hacker spirit” and “curiosity” being misappropriated to mean what they don’t (in a way, something opposite); if I wanted to support the call for boycott, I would have written so.

Treating a comment here as endorsing or refuting the entire thread leading up to it is not going to help a nuanced discussion.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're very wrong about this timeline. 1. I've never sourced hardware, so I can't comment directly on manufacturers. I have done plenty of business in Asia, and, I have purchased from alibaba. One side of those alibaba transactions is definitely using AI translation already. I don't think manufacturers in Asia will care at all "who" is sourcing product from them. For speccing a car - sure, you're right that a…

$1000 to the charity of your choice that this isn’t available in any generalizable way before 2030.

https://longbets.org/951/

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs does compose answers from its corpus, it doesn't refer to it, so it doesn't ensure factuality at all since it can still compose questions in stupid ways just like it always did. Most of the wrong thing it says is just invented by the model, not things it has seen, cleaning up the input doesn't add much there since it writes the same kind of bullshit as bullshitting humans do.

Yes, that is correct, and was also more than indicated in my initial comment. > The software engineer needs to "de-hallucinate" him in order to get a proper answer. The question is not whether a model is sound and complete. The question how LLMs perform in comparison to the existing solutions. Don't let perfect get in the way of good.

With humans, it is often easy to establish who hallucinates and who doesn't. We can all identify a snake oil sales pitch. However, with LLM, it can often be a lot harder.

Let's take an example. I studied physics and can likely answer most questions on nuclear physics. However, as it is a while back, my answers will not sound as smooth, and I may have to correct myself a few times.

If you ask ChatGPT the same questions, it will come up with elegant, convincing answers. As a layman, you will likely prefer what ChatGPT comes up with, as it is answers are eloquent. Of course, until you build a nuclear reactor using ChatGPT knowledge. Once the fuel rods become critical and start making its way through the earth's crust, you may realise you should have relied on my stumbling answers instead.

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