I wish GPT4 had never happened • Hacker News Board

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#181

Post by bryanlarsen » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:56 PM UTC

jzb wrote: post #60

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #29

The big oversight here is that Priya does not want a job , what Priya wants is an income . The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. We should strive to eliminate as many jobs as we possibly can, the less we have to work the better it is. To make this possible we need to find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income .

That would be great. It’s also not going to happen without a massive uprising. The people profiting off automation have zero intent of sharing the wealth and every intent of hoarding it.

To over-simplify, revolutions happen when young men get bored, gather into mobs to entertain themselves, and then somebody with a cause directs that mob into action.

The standard way to prevent revolutions is to channel the energy of young men into a productive job and a family.

But today, bored young men entertain themselves with video games etc rather than gathering in mobs to entertain themselves. We don't have large gatherings of aimless young men anymore.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#182

Post by crop_rotation » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

adhocmobility wrote: post #123

Hi everyone, author of the article here. I'm sorry if the article sounds overly pessimistic. I'm not making any claims with this article. I'm not proposing anything either. I do think technological progress is a good thing, even in this case. But I wrote this blog because I did have an emotional response to this technology, and wanted to pen down my thoughts. Its one thing to look at a report about the economic impac…

Thank you for penning down your emotional response. HN is mostly in denial of anything ChatGPT (most people haven't used GPT4 and keep pasting results of GPT3.5). The thing is that there is nothing other than denial that people can express. Saying that their jobs will become much less relevant is just too hard for almost anyone to swallow. People in this thread keep talking about productivity improvements, not realising that 2x is an improvement, 10x is a revolution.

There are several important differences in the impact of GPT4 vs the PC, which is being quoted quite a lot as a response in this thread. People talk of other scenarios as well, but even the best case scenarios (UBI) mean the end of social mobility, which means far fewer humans will have the chance of being ambitious and climbing the social ladder. And this is not even mentioning the 2nd and 3rd order effects.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#183

Post by czbond » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

eropple wrote: post #54

Robotbeat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All small businesses are not pure profit maximizers. Anyway even if they were, there’s MORE money to be made by empowering employees to use powerful tools which can increase revenues and profits much more than just firing. Doing so generates goodwill which improves employee effectiveness and drive.

Small businesses get eaten . That's the entire point of modern venture capital, even! Find ways to out-operationalize small businesses in sub-optimally exploited markets while burning an ocean of cash, then seek profits when you no longer have to dump to be competitive. It's okay to not think every technology under the sun is a good thing. You don't have to have heart-eyes emojis for the immiseration machine.

Most small businesses skimp by on very small margins - often run by "crafters" or "artistans" who generally couldn't tell you much about margins besides "cash in the bank"

I believe AGI can help small businesses have higher margins for the same service level - but lower cost.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#184

Post by eloff » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #169

logicalmonster wrote: post #138

1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. Though some people in some companies might be laid off, it doesn't necessarily mean that more people will be laid off than new jobs…

Your comment is amazing in its naivete. The first sentence in the post you are replying to already includes awareness of everything you said and more, while nothing in your comment suggests you understood the post at all. Priya doesn't become 10 times more productive, someone else uses the tool to do her job, which no longer exists.

That cycle has gone on since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Jobs are destroyed, people complain and protest, new jobs are created and the total economic pie and the absolute size of the average person’s slice increases.

A valid question is are there inventions for which this would not be true? I think yes for general AI, but also yes for people who are unable to migrate between a job lost and any of the new jobs created due to lack of education or willingness to reinvent themselves or relocate to where the new jobs are. Innovation can definitely create winners and losers. That’s bad for the losers, but not necessarily for society as a whole. Unless so many losers are created that they rise up and overthrow the system. That’s a real long tail risk if the pace of change sufficiently outpaces our ability to adapt to it.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#185

Post by amelius » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:57 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #171

netbioserror wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete. Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair. I've been through some of that befo…

> What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working [...] Agreed. I just spent a week volunteering. (At the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas, repairing machines.) It actually cost me money to do, but it was incredibly satisfying to just go and do a concrete thing that made the world better and was immediately beneficial to people. Especially in the company of other g…

If only ChatGPT could somehow be used to find us jobs rather than take them away ...

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#186

Post by cowsandmilk » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:58 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #159

logicalmonster wrote: post #138

1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. Though some people in some companies might be laid off, it doesn't necessarily mean that more people will be laid off than new jobs…

As for your point 2), we already have humans in the loop of other humans and this commonly leads to the "why do companies have so many people in them" trope we see posted on HN commonly. I think in that sense you may be underestimating how incredibly stupid people can be too. This said, AI doesn't remove all humans from the loop, but may significantly reduce how many are in said loop.

As someone who has worked at companies buying the databases that come from manually reading papers, the quality of them is hugely variable due to this. Lots of manual errors, missing context, etc.

Plenty of drug activity databases don’t distinguish between assays in solution, cell-based, and in vivo. When these produce hugely different values for inhibition due to metabolism and transport in biological environments.

GPT4 opens the possibilities for the true experts to focus on prompt engineering to extract these details, developing mechanisms to test performance, think deeply on how the data is stored and organized, etc.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#187

Post by crop_rotation » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:58 PM UTC

itissid wrote: post #177

I think that governments and organizations are asleep at the wheel when it comes to the unreasonable effectiveness of AI agents(virtual and physical). If Priya and 100's of millions of people lose their incomes it stands to reason that the government/organizations can empower these people to generate a source of sustenance using AI as well. I can't but not imagine a future where a country, lets call it Xhina, starts…

The future you project, for good or bad, shows an omnipotent government which has power over every aspect of human life about everything. Not sure if it is a good future.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#188

Post by fastball » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:58 PM UTC

inimino wrote: post #169

logicalmonster wrote: post #138

1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. Though some people in some companies might be laid off, it doesn't necessarily mean that more people will be laid off than new jobs…

Your comment is amazing in its naivete. The first sentence in the post you are replying to already includes awareness of everything you said and more, while nothing in your comment suggests you understood the post at all. Priya doesn't become 10 times more productive, someone else uses the tool to do her job, which no longer exists.

Is there any broadly useful invention in the history of humanity that hasn't put someone out of a job?

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#189

Post by whoisthemachine » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

netbioserror wrote: post #86

Aaargh20318 wrote: post #29

The big oversight here is that Priya does not want a job , what Priya wants is an income . The point of life is not working, the point of life is to enjoy it. We should strive to eliminate as many jobs as we possibly can, the less we have to work the better it is. To make this possible we need to find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income .

What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete. Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair. I've been through some of that befo…

You can work without doing so for income.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#190

Post by listenallyall » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 2:59 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #165

netbioserror wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a profoundly naive opinion. Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. Many people claim their lives would be better if they never had to work, but they are bullshitting themselves with childhood naivete. Not working is a sucking void of boredom, nihilism, hedonism, and despair. I've been through some of that befo…

Most people find meaning, fulfillment, even contentment in working, especially when the problems are engaging and the solutions produce value. You can do that without it being a job. I enjoy making things out of epoxy resin. It's fun, creative, hard work. I'd do it a lot more if we had universal basic income. It's not my job.

> You can do that without it being a job

Yes, you can, but his argument is that most people don't -- and he's right.