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I wish GPT4 had never happened

chaudhry.notion.site

541–550 of 1001 posts

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#541

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…

> 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.

It’s baffling to imagine that this would be the outcome of widespread use of AI. Ultimately this may be a philosophical question. To what degree do companies enrich the lives of people, vs. just sell then trash they don’t need? Particularly when it comes to the sorts of things that AI can produce: advertising copy, content, which will surely mean “engagement.” Ie, addictive trash.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#542
As someone who is fairly knowledgable about software engineering but doesn't code often enough to be a super-efficient developer, I feel like GPT4 is giving me super-powers. Suddenly it doesn't matter so much that I'm a bit rusty, or that I have the right general ideas but lack the granular expertise from experience usually needed to make quick progress.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#543
It is far from given that what the author predicts will happen will happen. And even if it does, this argument could have been made about any labor-saving technology in the past. “I wish Photoshop had never happened”.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#546
post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By this logic, Priya (the subject of the authors post) would not loose her job but rather just become more productive at her job. And I think that's the key to this whole "GPT4 is taking our jobs argument" that people need to understand, GPT is a bit like Autopilot in a Tesla, it can do the work for you but you still need a trained person there to guide it. Folks like Priya will not loose their jobs IMO, the company…

With GPT-4, Priya can do the work of 10 data curators in the same amount of time! She won't lose her job, they can afford to pay her more, because they won't need to pay 9 of her colleagues. Unless of course, one of her more experienced, connected, upper caste colleagues gets the 10x job instead.

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Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#547
post #404
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a similar experience (but slightly different). The biggest innovation that ChatGPT has brought to me in my programming/workflow tasks is the comfort and ease in which it creates shell scripts. That's an area that's always been just past my comfort zone ("Create a shell script to solve this problem? Now I have two problems..."). But all of a sudden, I feel like a master at shell scripting! Things that have al…

I can agree to that. I've been writing a lot small cli utilities than before, with argument parsers, help message ecc and in relatively small span of time. It is really useful and very fast.

A large time saving I’ve recently discovered is documenting functions. Paste the function in, tell it to write a docstring/whatever, and it’s 95% there, most of the time.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#548

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…

I appreciate the perspective shared in the article, but I can't help but find it somewhat egocentric. Firstly, it seems to overlook the fact that Priya was already being exploited in a low-paying job. The article describes the long hours and overwork she endures, but it fails to challenge the status quo of her employment situation. This lack of critical analysis may be indicative of a narrow focus on the negative eff…

I think I have a similar feeling to you.

Why is it that only the blog author gets to use GPT4 to do Priya's work? Why doesn't Priya also get to use GPT4 to accelerate/enhance her work?

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#549
post #468
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you asked Priya for her opinion about this? You've outlined the pessimistic case. Priya has qualifications in biotechnology. She currently spends her time doing work that sounds quite repetitive. If AI tools can help accelerate that work, is there a more optimistic scenario where she gets to do different, related work that isn't automatable? (I personally really hope the pessimistic case isn't what happens here,…

In my experience with Indians, in my opinion, they, more than any other populace value brands and labels. So, in a scenario where LLM automates her job, she will be unemployed along with 10 with the same job as her, and the "creative" job will go to someone who did her degree/s from an IIT. This is another fallacy when it comes to AI-replacements of jobs. AI will do the menial, repeating job and only the interesting,…

> You will be unemployed or in a UBI or your parents' basement eating Ramen, and that job will be done by an MIT gold medalist or a Math Olympiad medalist.

Along these lines I recommend the book The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#550
post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean I think that's with every system a problem. Not just ours. Wealth distribution has been a challenge since we've moved away from spending our day solely focused on gathering food / farming. Every shock to our current system will take time to adjust.

> Wealth distribution has been a challenge since we've moved away from spending our day solely focused on gathering food / farming. Have you ever considered that this may be due to the fact that our brains evolved to exist in a world where our day is largely focused on gathering food? We're not well-equipped to exist in other modes.

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