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I wish GPT4 had never happened

chaudhry.notion.site

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Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#371

Post by linsomniac »

dkqmduems wrote: post #305
sigstoat wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where's the predicted society where automation allows us all to work for two hours a day, and spend the rest at leisure? if you'd like the standard of living of a few centuries ago, you can probably fund that by programming for a couple hours a week. instead you want entertainments, medicines and foods that take correspondingly more effort to produce.

Eggs are still eggs no?

I'm not sure... I get the sense that eggs of the 1800s were likely a byproduct of having chickens, or barter with someone who had chickens. Yes, some effort went into them, where now it's more likely that the effort goes into work which turns into money which turns into eggs.

But, I've made a choice: I'll pay for eggs at the market rather than have chickens, because I don't want to have to deal with chickensitters when we got on a trip. This is the sort of choice that the person you're replying to is talking about.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#372

Post by [deleted] »

pydry wrote: post #283
mort96 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has been the promise over and over again, for centuries, and it has consistently not paid off. Where's the predicted society where automation allows us all to work for two hours a day, and spend the rest at leisure? The extra value has gone to enrich the oligarchs rather than to the people. Maybe that should change.

How do you deprive an oligarch of their ill gotten wealth without violence?

[deleted]

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#373

Post by jmerz »

mort96 wrote: post #249
pavel_lishin wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. This has been the promise over and over again, for centuries, and it has consistently not paid off. Where's the predicted society where automation allows us all to work for two hours a day, and spend the rest at leisure? > Though some people in some companies might be laid…

> This has been the promise over and over again, for centuries, and it has consistently not paid off. Where's the predicted society where automation allows us all to work for two hours a day, and spend the rest at leisure? The extra value has gone to enrich the oligarchs rather than to the people. Maybe that should change.

I think most humans today massively underestimate just how absolutely shitty the life of a medieval peasant was.

You would have lived in a one room house without electricity, worked the fields from childhood (if you survived childhood), eaten simple foods without spices, watched your friends die from illness, then maybe get conscripted into a medieval war.

If you thought the people at the top had power now boy you'd really hate feudalism.

I think a lot of modern society's wealth goes into unexpected places, which is one of the things you see if you try living in places with different national GDPs. I'm in a well off European country right now, and the biggest differences I see compared to the US are things like older cars and worse appliances. The technology is older, and cheaper. Everyone having the latest SUV and pickup truck is actually a HUGE investment in wealth!

If you spend some time in lat am countries with even lower per person GDP you see older, simpler buildings, cheaper clothing, simpler food, etc etc.

If you wanted to live in the united states with a 1950s car, in an old house, with appliances from the 80s and shitty healthcare, you could live pretty cheap as well. The advances in productivity has brought us SOMEWHERE it's just not always obvious where.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#374

Post by callesgg »

People will always get lost I the system.

On a societal level “work” does not generate money.

Money exists as is and is only generated as a consequence of inequality these days. Banks inject money to compensate for the rich who won’t or can’t spend their money.

“Work” generates money-transactions.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#375

Post by XorNot »

hnfong wrote: post #328
photochemsyn wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not use AI to automate away the board of directors and the shareholders? It should be entirely possible. We just need an AI capable of generating its own capital, then the investor class can be removed from the loop.

This sounds horrible. You’re basically saying you want everyone to work for companies controlled by AI.

Why? An AI when told "follow local labor laws" is actually going to do it perfectly. Whereas those boards of executives are very happy not doing it.

A workers co-op owned company headed by an AI decisioning board would be able to maintain constant, real time feedback and coordination with all workers, and would be faster and more maneuverable then human headed companies.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#376

Post by proamdev123 »

Calavar wrote: post #31
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 on…

It doesn’t need to know about your specific code base if you have it write a function for the task you’re prompting it for. You can copy/paste the function into your code and run the function with arguments that are specific to your code base.

You can even prompt it to write a unit test for the function it wrote.

As for your concerns about code errors, I’ve found that you have to approach the coding support as an iterative process, where you request code, and then ask it to improve or correct the result it just gave. You can even prompt it to check its previous result for errors.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#377

Post by Julesman »

michael_nielsen wrote: post #304
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 lack of empathy. Everything you write can be true, and this can still be disastrous for some individual, whose life may be badly damaged.

This. Empathy. People acting like they sound smart when they talk like a USC sophomore who equates logic with truth. As if the human condition were an actuary table. As if triage was a guiding principle of human culture. This kind of thinking slips easily into fascism. Ayn Rand writ large.

Such a lack of nuance. We can pragmatically recognize that pandora's box has been opened and also, at the same time, have an ounce of empathy. We can even like where things are going, understand the negative impact on some, AND still have empathy.

What I see here is emotional immaturity and the arrogance of someone who never learned the value of maturity. Lazy thinking. Self-serving modes of thought that allow you to feel ok with selfishness. Unchecked capitalist ideology. The psychology of greed.

It's sad.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#378

Post by runarberg »

richwater wrote: post #332
mort96 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has been the promise over and over again, for centuries, and it has consistently not paid off. Where's the predicted society where automation allows us all to work for two hours a day, and spend the rest at leisure? The extra value has gone to enrich the oligarchs rather than to the people. Maybe that should change.

Claiming society hasn't massively benefited from productivity increases over the last century is certainly a take.... typical western raised privileged person claiming how terrible everything is.

Is what you could claim if inequality wasn’t a detrimental to quality of life in and of it self, a fact which psychologists and sociologists have pretty well established at this point.

Also ignoring climate change, and how disproportionately it affects those less well off while overwhelmingly caused by the rich. Your quality of life may be better than in the 1950s, but this is going to be reverse really quickly over the next 50 years when we are hitting 2-3 degrees of warming, unless you are part of the 1% that can buy your self out of the crisis.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#379

Post by hnfong »

danShumway wrote: post #224
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…

"Work" above is being used in a more specific form than you are using it. GP is not referring to all productive work, they are specifically referring to employment on the market. Yes, human beings are better in relationships and better when they help each other, but GP is not talking about abolishing helping other people or doing meaningful things. There are a huge number of things people can do to meaningfully make…

I generally agree with you in principle, but it’s not a given that you can find meaning outside of the job market if the market doesn’t find your labor valuable.

What if nobody actually wants your “help”? What if your labor is not only worthless in the job market, but also in general, where people prefer assistance from AI instead of from a live human person? What if no matter what you do, some AI does it better? How will humanity find our own value and meaning when that happens?

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#380

Post by mort96 »

jmerz wrote: post #373
mort96 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has been the promise over and over again, for centuries, and it has consistently not paid off. Where's the predicted society where automation allows us all to work for two hours a day, and spend the rest at leisure? The extra value has gone to enrich the oligarchs rather than to the people. Maybe that should change.

I think most humans today massively underestimate just how absolutely shitty the life of a medieval peasant was. You would have lived in a one room house without electricity, worked the fields from childhood (if you survived childhood), eaten simple foods without spices, watched your friends die from illness, then maybe get conscripted into a medieval war. If you thought the people at the top had power now boy you'd…

Yet there are people who wield the wealth equivalent to a moderately rich country's GDP. A great deal of our collective increased value output is going straight to those individuals.
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