Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I wish GPT4 had never happened

chaudhry.notion.site

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 1001 posts

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#31

Post by Calavar »

seumars wrote: post #6

>if you’re anxious about GPT4 its probably because you’re a shitty programmer surely this is meant partly tongue-in-cheek?

I experimented with coding with GPT a few times now.

GPT is legitimately interesting as an alternative search interface to StackOverflow. I've found that 15 to 45 minutes of searching with Google/StackOverflow can be reduced to just 5 minutes with GPT.

But beyond that, it's been very disappointing. Whenever I've tried getting it to write something even slightly non-trivial (i.e. tougher than just copy/pasting from online documentation or an answer on StackOverflow) it's produced code that is horribly broken, but where the flaws are subtle enough that they might not pop out right away to a novice programmer. It has consistently struggled with programming problems that I would rate at 4/10 or 5/10 difficulty.

Most of the code I write is fairly trivial, but it's glue code that is highly specific to my particular code base, so GPT isn't helpful because it doesn't know about my codebase, and if you try to copy/paste your large chunks of your codebase into the prompt it runs into issues with forgetting.

And GPT isn't helpful for the non-trivial parts of my code either (as mentioned above). So what's left?

So when I see people say that it 10x'ed their productivity, I wonder if they exclusively write very trivial code that is effectively copy/paste from Stack Overflow or if they've allowed GPT to fill their codebases with flawed code without realizing it.

Maybe future iterations of GPT will get it. GPT4 is definitely not there yet.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#32

Post by atemerev »

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 .

[flagged]

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#33

Post by Robotbeat »

eropple wrote: post #10
T-A wrote: post #2

> GPT4 gave the correct answer in 1/10th the time it would take Priya and cost a lot less. [...] Priya has tried to learn coding, but she has struggled. Not that she gets a lot of time to do it either. 1) Show Priya how to use GPT4 to do her current job in 1/10th of the time. 2) Let her use part (50%+) of the time saved to learn coding or whatever other skill she needs (not sure coding is it).

Why? No really: why? Businesses are profit-seeking entities. Why not just fire nine people? You save money . (Yes, this could be a really stupid decision for the company in question. I agree with you. I'm not saying what should happen. I'm saying what will happen, and that that is really bad.)

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.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#34

Post by tambourine_man »

seumars wrote: post #6

>if you’re anxious about GPT4 its probably because you’re a shitty programmer surely this is meant partly tongue-in-cheek?

No, Lex is like that.

There must be a reason why he manages to have great people on his show, but it’s one I can’t comprehend.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#35

Post by baremetal »

discordance wrote: post #17
baremetal wrote: post #5

>Priya has tried to learn coding, but she has struggled. Not that she gets a lot of time to do it either. What about time after work. That is when I learned to code. In between work and going to school in fact.

GPT is just moving us up the stack. Coding should be even more accessible for Priya now.

Not if we coddle her and make excuses for her not learning or tell her shes a victim of chatgpt.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#36

Post by avion23 »

avion23 wrote: post #24

The Author proposes to keep worthless jobs. The same argument could be made against compilers or language translaters. This is encapsulated in a sob story. Am I wrong? I would like to hear your counter arguments

Reading that article made me angry because I wasted my time. This is a nice analysis à grace de gpt4:

Key facts:

1. Priya is a biomedical data curator in her mid-20s from a poor background in Uttar Pradesh, India. 2. She has a bachelor's degree in Biotechnology and her job involves annotating RNA sequencing data from scientific papers. 3. The author tried using GPT-4 to perform Priya's job and achieved the correct result in less time and at a lower cost. 4. The author speculates that Priya may lose her job within six months due to automation. 5. The author expresses concern about their own long-term career prospects in software engineering because of GPT-4.

Logical fallacies: 1. Hasty Generalization: The author assumes that GPT-4 will make Priya's job obsolete based on a single successful trial. 2. Slippery Slope: The author assumes that GPT-4's impact on Priya's job will lead to her losing her job and moving back home, and potentially to the decline of the author's own career prospects in software engineering.

Counter arguments:

1. GPT-4 may not be able to handle all aspects of Priya's job or maintain consistent quality, which could still necessitate human intervention. 2. The advent of GPT-4 could lead to new job opportunities that require both domain expertise and an understanding of the technology. 3. As technology progresses, there is potential for job retraining and upskilling to adapt to new demands in the workforce.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#37

Post by atemerev »

Yes, the entire economy will be overhauled in next 6-12 months. The transition will be turbulent and rough. But it's not like everyone will be out of jobs. Just the nature of their jobs will change significantly.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#38

Post by csomar »

avion23 wrote: post #24

The Author proposes to keep worthless jobs. The same argument could be made against compilers or language translaters. This is encapsulated in a sob story. Am I wrong? I would like to hear your counter arguments

I think the author is not proposing to keep worthless jobs but realized that while Priya work is worthless, his very own work is about to become so.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#39

Post by esperent »

The problem is systemic and ChatGPT only serves to highlight that. Wishing a new tool wasn't invented because it further highlights deep systemic inequality is focused on the wrong thing. The deep systemic inequality is the problem. Our climate being destroyed. Our houses being bought up by megacorps and rented back to us at exorbitant rates. Our natural resources being spent with no thought to the future. And now our information being sucked up and spat out in the form of yet more profit to the megacorps.

Making us feel sorry for this real or imaginary Priya character who'll lose her job to AI is along the same lines as saying that we need to personally recycle to prevent climate change. It's not the solution.

The solution must be systemic change. All the profit going to huge companies while they destroy the environment, suck up natural resources, and now also informational resources in the endless cycle of greed and lack of accountability, with the only motivation being more bonuses for shareholders and executives. This cannot stand. Our societies are already breaking down. We need change.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#40

Post by avion23 »

avion23 wrote: post #36
avion23 wrote: post #24

The Author proposes to keep worthless jobs. The same argument could be made against compilers or language translaters. This is encapsulated in a sob story. Am I wrong? I would like to hear your counter arguments

Reading that article made me angry because I wasted my time. This is a nice analysis à grace de gpt4: Key facts: 1. Priya is a biomedical data curator in her mid-20s from a poor background in Uttar Pradesh, India. 2. She has a bachelor's degree in Biotechnology and her job involves annotating RNA sequencing data from scientific papers. 3. The author tried using GPT-4 to perform Priya's job and achieved the correct re…

[flagged]
Post reply on HN