Anthropic pivoting to doing economics? Seems about as legit as most economics
Probably an overall smart move, since claiming to be doing economics sometimes leads to being positioned to make policy favorable to oneself
The Anthropic Economic Index
141–150 of 238 posts
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. reminds me of the ancient okcupid data analysis blogs and not the creepy one by sleep8. The group I'm surprised not to see represented in their analysis is "personal", where people I know use ChatGPT as a therapist/life coach/sms analysis&editor. and of course they crucially but understandably left off the denominator. 35% of a million requests is different than 35% of a billion. and also how many of the conver…
> not the creepy one by sleep8 What are you referring to?
Oh I guess it was just a tweet, but still.
https://www.404media.co/ceo-reminds-everyone-eightsleep-pod-...
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#143This more or less confirms what I imagine most of us thought, AI is mostly used by engineers, or for engineering tasks. Makes sense, I wonder how much traffic comes from automated tasks (co-pilot, etc). Every time I read a report like this I do wonder if we'll ever see an ROI on LLMs. HUNDREDS of billions of dollars of spend, and 3 years in its still primarily the same crowd using it, and has yet to create a "killer"…
I would agree that the products coming out so far lack imagination, but hard disagree on the impact. LLMs have completely transformed multiple industries already. In SWE, I would estimate that junior positions shrank by 70-80%, but even that is less extreme than what is going on in other industries. In marketing, the entire low-end to mid-tier market is gone. Instead of having teams working on projects for small to m…
I think a lot of this is because the economic pressure is weak right now both on the side of labor and consumers, due to decades of severe upward wealth transfer. A lot of these companies are not improving or even maintaining their productivity or quality of service, and while there are probably some productivity gains for engineers, I suspect based on what I'm seeing that this is going to burn a lot of people out, as there is significant social pressure both from peers and employers to exaggerate this somewhat. People can have too heavy a workload for a decent amount of time before breaking.
There's just no countervailing force to make these decisions that immediately painful for them. Sectors are monopolized, people are tired and desperate, tech workers are in a basically unprecedented bout of instability.
The situation is super dark from a lot of angles, but I don't think it's really "the overwhelming usefulness of AI" that's to blame here. As far as I can tell, the biggest thing these technologies are doing is providing a cover story for private-equity-style guttings of various knowledge work verticals for short-term profit, which was kind of inevitable given that's been happening across the board in the larger economy, it's just another pretense that works for different verticals.
There are cases where LLMs seem really genuinely useful (Mostly ones that are for and by SWEs, like generating documentation or smoothing some ramp processes in learning new libraries or languages) and those don't seem to be "transformative" at scale yet, unless we count "transforming" many products into buggier products that are more brittle and frustrating to interact with
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#144It would be interesting to know how much of this effect is also explained by factors other than income and profession, and even types of work. I work both as a software developer and a psychologist, and I love tinkering in the shop with welding and mechanics. It is extremely obvious that using AI is more available and appropriate when coding, as you're often in front of a very capable computer with a good interface t…
Have you tried ChatGPT's advanced voice mode, and if so, what did you think of it?
I have used it a lot, and I love it, but it's very limited with regards to which situations it's useful in. It's way too sensitive to sound, so it stops way to often when answering; if there is noise in the room (as there often is in a shop).
It's also often not useful because it's more work to spell out every other thing that dictation is not good for. For instance, If i want to ask "What does the ICD-10 code for F320 stand for?", it might transcribe it as "What does IceDen code for F3. 120. stand for?" When I have to start messing around with the keyboard anyways, it's double slow compared to just typing on a physical keyboard.
Many times when I need input, the thing in question is a technical term. This is as true in psychology as in coding. So it must have a way to correctly understand the uncommon terms, for instance, a predictable way to spell out or ask for clarification. Same with regards to coding terms. What is the chance that it correctly understands?"Explain #include syntax"?
That said, it's awesome as long as the question uses common and predictable words. It's just surprising how often it uses uncommon terms. Thus, it's awesome, but limited. The best use case is when I think of a topic while walking the dog that I want more information on. Then I can have a cool conversation with it while walking.
On another note: It went completely off the rails for me a month ago and stopped giving useful information after it created a memory that I "want short, concise, factual, and to-the-point responses," which is true, but it went from informative to almost giving me the silent treatment and answering show short that it was useless. I feel it never got completely back to normal after removing that memory.
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the problem is the data. Software engineering is a weird niche that is both a high paying job and something you can almost self-teach from widely available free online content. If not self-teach, you can rely on free online content for troubleshooting, examples, etc. A lot of other industries/jobs are more of an apprenticeship model, with little data and even less freely available on open internet.
> Software engineering is a weird niche that is both a high paying job and something you can almost self-teach If you meant programming, I agree it could be self-taught, but not SE. SE is the set of techniques, practices, tools that we have collected over decades for producing multi-versioned software that meets a certain reliability rating. Not all of these is freely available online.
Unless you are talking about people who are actual licensed engineers, this is a distinction without a difference.
Thing is, I’ve never met someone in software with a professional license.
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#146This more or less confirms what I imagine most of us thought, AI is mostly used by engineers, or for engineering tasks. Makes sense, I wonder how much traffic comes from automated tasks (co-pilot, etc). Every time I read a report like this I do wonder if we'll ever see an ROI on LLMs. HUNDREDS of billions of dollars of spend, and 3 years in its still primarily the same crowd using it, and has yet to create a "killer"…
I would agree that the products coming out so far lack imagination, but hard disagree on the impact. LLMs have completely transformed multiple industries already. In SWE, I would estimate that junior positions shrank by 70-80%, but even that is less extreme than what is going on in other industries. In marketing, the entire low-end to mid-tier market is gone. Instead of having teams working on projects for small to m…
>I know multiple agencies who cut staff by 80-90% without dropping revenue.
I'm finding it hard to reconcile this with my own experiences. My whole team ( 5 people ) left last year ( for better pay I guess ) and the marketing agency in germany Im working for had to substitute them with freelancers. To offset the cost they fired the one guy who was hired to push the whole LLM AI topic. We managed to fill one junior position by offering 10k+ more then in their last job. The firm would love to hire people to replace the freelancers. We had to cut stuff lately. But mostly they closed the kitchen which wasn't used due to work from home policy. Definitely don't see any stuff reduction due to automation / LLM use. They still pay (external) people 60€ per written text/article. Because clients don't like LLM written stuff.
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#147This more or less confirms what I imagine most of us thought, AI is mostly used by engineers, or for engineering tasks. Makes sense, I wonder how much traffic comes from automated tasks (co-pilot, etc). Every time I read a report like this I do wonder if we'll ever see an ROI on LLMs. HUNDREDS of billions of dollars of spend, and 3 years in its still primarily the same crowd using it, and has yet to create a "killer"…
I mean, are any of us shocked that folks who work with computers or are computer enthusiasts are early adopters of LLMs?
I feel like this has less to do with what LLMs are best at and more to do with which folks are mostly likely to spend time using a chat bot.
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who works in finance, I would disagree. I asked ChatGPT: Is the noun spend rare? ChatGPT said: The noun "spend" is relatively rare compared to its more common form as a verb. While "spend" is widely used as a verb (meaning to give money or time for something), as a noun, it refers to an expenditure or the act of spending, and it’s not as commonly encountered. In most contexts, people would use alternatives…
Well, ChatGPT is making the same point. Not well known outside the financial industry. The majority of audience and posters of ycombinator are not in that industry group, right?
“Spend” is a common term in advertising, which is arguably the single largest employer of software engineers
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Claude is mostly used by software engineers. That's an important distinction to make. I love Claude, but let's not ignore that in the LLM race, they're not exactly the leading player.
Can I ask a dumb question as an LLM newbie? What is it about Claude that makes it so good at basic software engineering tasks? Do you think it was finely tuned to be good at these tasks? No joke/trolling: A bunch of people have posted on HN in the last 6 months about creating MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) -- usually web apps -- using Claude. As a non-web-app programmer, I think this is amazing progress!
I think it understands the context better and it was possibly fine tuned better. I have been using GPT since 3 and while the replies have obviously gotten more accurate, it still makes weird assumptions at times, whereas Claude seems to "get it" more often. In tasks other than coding, I've found gpt to be more detailed by default and yet Claude seems to hit the mark better.
Re: The Anthropic Economic Index
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Software engineering is a weird niche that is both a high paying job and something you can almost self-teach If you meant programming, I agree it could be self-taught, but not SE. SE is the set of techniques, practices, tools that we have collected over decades for producing multi-versioned software that meets a certain reliability rating. Not all of these is freely available online.
Unless you are talking about people who are actual licensed engineers, this is a distinction without a difference. Thing is, I’ve never met someone in software with a professional license.
I didn't mean the professional license, rather the ensemble of practices, tools, etc. It is practiced in safety critical domains.