Generative AI and The Future of Work
maestroai.substack.com
Generative AI and The Future of Work
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Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#2[deleted]
Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#3> The results are often wildly creative and spookily accurate, giving these models a human-like feel.
or wildly inaccurate, particularly in fields such as programming
Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#4> Widespread adoption of generative AI will act as a lubricant between systems,
I largely agree with this article, but I feel like you have to be careful with these general predictions. Many technologies have purported themselves to be this "business lubricant" tech (ever since the spreadsheet), but the actual number of novel spreadsheet applications remains small. It feels like the same can be said for generative AI, too. Almost every day I feel the need to explain that "generation" and "abstract thought" are distinct concepts, because conflating the two leads to so much misconception around AI. Stable Diffusion has no concept of artistic significance, just art. Similarly, ChatGPT can only predict what happens next, which doesn't bestow it heuristic thought. Our collective awe-struck-ness has left us vulnerable to the fact that AI generation is, generally speaking, hollow and indirect.
AI will certainly change the future, and along with it the future of work, but we've all heard idyllic interpretations of benign tech before. Framing the topic around content rather than capability is a good start, but you easily get lost in the weeds again when you start claiming it will change everything.
Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#5> Widespread adoption of generative AI will act as a lubricant between systems, I largely agree with this article, but I feel like you have to be careful with these general predictions. Many technologies have purported themselves to be this "business lubricant" tech (ever since the spreadsheet), but the actual number of novel spreadsheet applications remains small. It feels like the same can be said for generative AI…
> Our collective awe-struck-ness has left us vulnerable to the fact that AI generation is, generally speaking, hollow and indirect.
This totally resonates with me. This is absolutely correct. Thinking about the future of work, there's much of what I do every day in my job that is hollow and indirect. And I would be totally okay if I could have something like ChatGPT do it for me.
Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#6> Widespread adoption of generative AI will act as a lubricant between systems, I largely agree with this article, but I feel like you have to be careful with these general predictions. Many technologies have purported themselves to be this "business lubricant" tech (ever since the spreadsheet), but the actual number of novel spreadsheet applications remains small. It feels like the same can be said for generative AI…
"but the actual number of novel spreadsheet applications remains small."
That's not my experience, I am continuously amazed by the amount of tasks worker bees manage to do in excel.
I kind of wish MS access was more of a thing, because when eventually it doesn't scale and you need a "proper" system, it takes a rewrite.
Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#7> Widespread adoption of generative AI will act as a lubricant between systems, I largely agree with this article, but I feel like you have to be careful with these general predictions. Many technologies have purported themselves to be this "business lubricant" tech (ever since the spreadsheet), but the actual number of novel spreadsheet applications remains small. It feels like the same can be said for generative AI…
Weren't we all supposed to be lollygagging about, as our robots did everything for us, by now?
I can't wait for Wall-E!
https://www.thelist.com/img/gallery/things-only-adults-notic...
Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#8> Widespread adoption of generative AI will act as a lubricant between systems, I largely agree with this article, but I feel like you have to be careful with these general predictions. Many technologies have purported themselves to be this "business lubricant" tech (ever since the spreadsheet), but the actual number of novel spreadsheet applications remains small. It feels like the same can be said for generative AI…
> Our collective awe-struck-ness has left us vulnerable to the fact that AI generation is, generally speaking, hollow and indirect. This totally resonates with me. This is absolutely correct. Thinking about the future of work, there's much of what I do every day in my job that is hollow and indirect. And I would be totally okay if I could have something like ChatGPT do it for me.
[deleted]
Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#9I don't have a problem with the main point of the article, but there is a huge terminology confusion that is rapidly gathering force to confuse people. The key breakthroughs of GPT3 et al are not primarily about generative AI. People had been building generative models long before GPT3, and it was generally found that discriminative models had better performance.
They key to the power of GPT3 is that it has billions of parameters, AND those parameters are well-justified because it was trained on billions of documents. So the term should be something like "gigaparam AI" or something like that. Maybe GIGAI as a parallel to GOFAI. If you could somehow build a gigaparam discrimative model, you would get better performance on the task it was trained on than GPT3.
Re: Generative AI and The Future of Work
#10> Widespread adoption of generative AI will act as a lubricant between systems, I largely agree with this article, but I feel like you have to be careful with these general predictions. Many technologies have purported themselves to be this "business lubricant" tech (ever since the spreadsheet), but the actual number of novel spreadsheet applications remains small. It feels like the same can be said for generative AI…
"but the actual number of novel spreadsheet applications remains small." That's not my experience, I am continuously amazed by the amount of tasks worker bees manage to do in excel. I kind of wish MS access was more of a thing, because when eventually it doesn't scale and you need a "proper" system, it takes a rewrite.
That's fair enough, I've seen some pretty cool things in spreadsheet software too.
My larger point, though, is that most people end up using spreadsheets to do the same thing. It's fun to imagine novel uses for a spreadsheet, like a DAW or video game, but ultimately it's not very useful for that. Similarly, ChatGPT is great for writing convincing text - that's what everyone uses it for. Can it solve math though? Not very well. Future applications of the tech are more likely to be specialized, in that sense.
Mostly, I'm a curmudgeon and I despise these "flying car of the future" articles. Popular Mechanics printed them for decades, and half a century later nothing has changed (not even the culture writing them).