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I wish GPT4 had never happened

chaudhry.notion.site

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Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#561
post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

I don't think this is something people should be worried about. There is so much stuff to do in the world, and quite frankly, there are not enough people to do all of it. And a lot of that stuff is not particularly suited to AI.

But what I would question if you want to get a little existential -- do people value being helpful or do they value feeling helpful, because those are two different things. And I think that if the idea of "people need help and what if an AI can help them better than I can" is actually terrifying to people, that should maybe prompt a small amount of reflection about our motivations for helping others.

But the shorter answer is that there is just so much stuff to do in the world right now.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#563
It sounds like Priya is just going to be analyzing a lot more RNA sequencing data with a new tool since someone still needs to verify that it's correct.

Maybe she'll lose her job because there's only so much RNA sequence data that needs to be analyzed and fewer people can do it, but it's hard to say.

Maybe now more RNA sequence data can be analyzed and at a cheaper cost.

I wouldn't fall into despair just yet, especially since GPT-4 is still limited at a rate of 25 messages every 3 hours.

Definitely be on the lookout for changes and adapt accordingly, but be realistic about what may happen.

It can go both ways.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#564
Could Priya use chatgpt herself to do 10x bio-curations? Would this enable her to potentially set up a freelance competitor to her current employer? Could a competitor using chatgpt like that hire her to do 10x the work? Could her current employer re-deploy her somewhere else now that bio-curations are sorted out? Yes to all.

The author is correct, the current arrangement will change, but the opportunities will likely increase as well, not just at the macro level but in Priya’s intermediate future as well.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#565
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.

[citation needed]

primates don't spend the majority of their day gathering food; there's not reason to believe early humans were different.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I your work is not producing anything valuable for other people it's void and you will get bored pretty fast, it's a human nature. If it does you can always find a way to monetize it as people need it and ready to share their wealth for something they need. No, it doesn't have to be a work "for a company", but if you can't "make money off of this" it probably means your "work" is only relevant to you, or somebody els…

People who have enough wealth to not work for a living seem to manage their boredom pretty well.

People who have earned enough wealth to not for a living do, though those who've worked hard enough to do that typically don't have much in their life but work.

People who simply have enough wealth to not have to work are on a hedonistic treadmill most of the time

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#568

In my experience with Chat GPT it usually gets things right 85% right. But the last 15% is making sure things actually work, and Chat GPT simply can't do that. Your friend still is going to have a job, but she'll probably be made much more productive by AI tools. We're a long ways off from actually being able to depend on these tools for any reliable type of output.

Such rationalizations always ignore the trajectory we're on. Just look at the vast difference between GPT-2 (2019), GPT-3 (2020) and GPT-4 (2023). If this progression continues, in 10 years all jobs that can be solved by software, will be solved by AI.

I'm only responding to the article, which states the author's friend will be out of a job in 6 months.

I'm somewhat doubtful AI, will actually replace humans. If anything we'll just have more interesting problems to solve.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 your work is not producing anything valuable for other people it's void and you will get bored pretty fast, it's a human nature. If it does you can always find a way to monetize it as people need it and ready to share their wealth for something they need. No, it doesn't have to be a work "for a company", but if you can't "make money off of this" it probably means your "work" is only relevant to you, or somebody els…

> If it does you can always find a way to monetize it as people need it and ready to share their wealth for something they need

I disagree with this entirely. If this was true, the main question we would ask in a business is whether or not the output was useful. We don't ask that, we ask if it's "sustainable", "profitable", etc... We ask what the moat is around it.

There are many useful things you can do that you won't be able to make money off of. I don't think it's uncommon either. Business is a great way of extracting value, I like business as a value extractor. But it's a specific way of extracting value. There are lots of things that are valuable that don't happen because it's not clear how they would be profitable.

I mean, the simplest example here is you can build things for people who don't have money. It's not the only example, but it's a pretty obvious one. And you are not going to make a lot of money doing that unless you build a predatory or exploitative business.

> or somebody else will "make money off of this" using what you have created

I will also point out that if other people making money off of the things you do is a turn-off, it's not clear to me what value you think you're creating. I would argue that "meaningful work" very often benefits other people, that's... that's the point. If you're not giving people more value than you're taking from them, you probably aren't doing useful work. Are you arguing that it's less valuable if people are extracting extra value from the things we do?

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#570

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 .

> To make this possible we need to find a way to a new system that doesn't directly link labour with income.

As others have pointed out, this is an incredibly naive opinion. Labor is tied to income precisely because it happened organically, not because a group of self-appointed individuals decided to develop a "system". Most attempts to develop alternative (read: non-organic or top-down) systems for organizing human societies have either failed entirely or have been short-lived.

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