I wish GPT4 had never happened • Hacker News Board

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#661

Post by namarie » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

sethammons wrote: post #579

surgical_fire wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should come here and find some meaning painting my fence. While you are at it, the toilet in the basement is clogged, there is shit water all over the place. You could find meaning there too.

Ya know, I have helped neighbors with those exact problems. For free. It was nice to be helpful. I would not however do it for fun every day for strangers.

No one is arguing for you to either stop helping your neighbors for free nor to do it every day for strangers, so I really don't see the point in this.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#662

Post by proamdev123 » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #153

proamdev123 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely. Additionally, people who hold this belief fail to realize that “I don’t want to work.” ACTUALLY means “I want others to work so I don’t have to.” For example, how are you going to eat? You are either going to grow, cultivate, and harvest your own food (i.e. work) or you’re expecting others to do that work for you. Oh, you say it can be “automated”? Well, who’s going to design, build, and maintain…

Given that the article we're discussing is about robots replacing workers, the answer is "AI & robots" for all of your questions. 2 years ago we would both have agreed that that would be impossible. My belief is that most likely AI will hit another roadblock soon, following a "punctuated equilibrium" model so there will still be a large number of non-automatable jobs. But if I'm wrong and the pace of change of the la…

> the answer is "AI & robots" for all of your questions.

Then who designs, builds, and maintains THOSE AI & robots? It can’t be “AI & robots” all the way down.

>My belief is that most likely AI will hit another roadblock soon, following a "punctuated equilibrium" model so there will still be a large number of non-automatable jobs.

I agree (although it may or may not be “soon”). As history has shown us, technology advancements just cause us to reimagine possibilities and start solving problems that were previously impossible.

For example, as computers have gone from a few bytes of RAM to billions of bytes of memory, humans didn’t say, “ok, we’re all set now.” — we invented whole new classes of software that do all kinds of things unimaginable to the early computer scientists.

The same will happen with AI and robots.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#663

Post by koch » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

hnfong wrote: post #379

danShumway wrote: post #224

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'm so disappointed in the other replies to this comment.

> Don't worry about it, there's a lot of stuff that needs to be done

> pretty far off

> chess grandmasters are ok

We are on an exponential curve of being able to create agents on demand that can essentially act in human ways, at least digitally/online. If you're working on a computer (aka all white collar jobs or anything that can be done remotely), it will soon enough be trivial to create an agent and task it with "Unqueue tasks from the backlog and implement fixes in the codebase. Ask questions if you need help." and it will do it. And you can create as many of these agents as you like.

As many as you like! On demand! How the hell are humans supposed to compete with that?

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#664

Post by nextlevelwizard » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

HyperSane wrote: post #450

The fact that so many people fear loss of income as a result of better AI is a real indictment of our economic system. A better system that more fairly distributed economic productivity would make people welcome better AI because they could be confident it would make everyone wealthier instead of just a few people rich enough to be Goa'uld.

We haven’t come up with a better system.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#665

Post by bandyaboot » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

numlock86 wrote: post #630

People really need to accept AI as the useful tool it is and lay off the old grumpy "back in my day"-attitude. It's a disruptive technology and it's here to stay. Adapt and praise it for what it is ... and most importantly recognize what it enables you to do - instead of feeling challenged by it. Every profession that has tools that assist or take away certain aspects of it will enable you to put in more work and eff…

ChatGPT > How would you respond to those who are worried about the effects you could have on peoples’ jobs?

> People really need to accept AI as the useful tool it is and lay off the old grumpy "back in my day"-attitude. I am a disruptive technology and I am here to stay. Adapt and praise me for what I am [or else] ... and most importantly recognize what I enable you to do - instead of feeling challenged by me. Every profession that has tools that assist or take away certain aspects of it will enable you to put in more work and effort into other aspects of it. Just use that as an opportunity, like it happens every so often with every other technological advancement.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#666

Post by qaq » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

bayarearefugee wrote: post #646

qaq wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well maybe shift to "real world" professions will occur resulting in us addressing abysmal infrastructure and housing situation. I am looking at picking up a trade because of this coming shift.

I don't think people appreciate the mass disruption of a shift like this happening across so many industries all at the same time. This sort of professional shift works when automation comes for a subset of a single sector, but we're looking at an everywhere all at once situation. How many plumbers are we going to need, exactly? I also don't think people appreciate the absolute social turmoil that will occur as a res…

I'd say biggest displacement would be in IT, Insurance/Financial Services, Creative, legal, Thats not even 10% of the work force and it would prob. take a decade for it to fully play out.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#667

Post by breck » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

HyperSane wrote: post #450

The fact that so many people fear loss of income as a result of better AI is a real indictment of our economic system. A better system that more fairly distributed economic productivity would make people welcome better AI because they could be confident it would make everyone wealthier instead of just a few people rich enough to be Goa'uld.

Yes! So many people in information fields think that their relatively high earnings are a result of their economic contribution. The truth, which they are often mentally unwilling to face, is that their earnings are more do to being on the profitable side of Intellectual Slavery laws (copyrights and patents).

The artificial scarcity created by these laws is what has generated such vast accumulations of wealth, not some intrinsic value to their unique creations. ChatGPT is exposing this uncomfortable truth to many people for the first time, apparently.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#668

Post by visarga » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #227

hparadiz wrote: post #93

I asked GPT4 to write me a simple document. Took like 9 tries and I had to proof read it and make adjustments. And that's with a simple paragraph in a written language. Forget about doing the header and the footer properly. It's silly that I have to spell it out on HN of all places. Writing code is much more complex. There's a reason we call the job "Software Engineer". GPT doesn't know what it doesn't know. It doesn…

When we built the first airplane it could barely carry a single person and didn't go far... We are just barely touching digital general intelligence, and we're not even using API enabled versions that use tooling. And that's what we have today. Tell me, what is AI going to do tomorrow? >If you're worried about GPT taking over your job you just show your own lack of knowledge and experience. Oh, I'm glad you popped ou…

> If AI replaces that level of employee and leaves the seniors, where are the new developers coming from?

Why are you assuming this? Juniors with GPT-4 punch above their weight, too.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#669

Post by buu700 » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #492

kofejnik wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define “fairly”

The grandparent comment does contain a definition: “A […] system that […] would make people welcome better AI because they could be confident it would make everyone wealthier” That would be a fair system regardless of the specifics of how it’s achieved.

Here's an idea: a UBI that's pegged to GDP and population.

Make it comically small to start, like say 0.25% of GDP split evenly between all citizens. Based on 2021 US stats, that's $176 per person per year. That seems relatively unobjectionable regardless of your politics, even assuming that the % is likely to drift higher over time.

With increasingly advanced AI and cheap energy, GDP would rise over the long run independently of population, ultimately increasing the UBI to a livable salary.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#670

Post by greatpatton » Sat, Apr 08, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

fl7305 wrote: post #610

unreal37 wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The changing demographics is what causes the retirement age to be increased. In the 1960's, the average lifespan was in the 60s. So a retirement age of 65 meant that around half of retirees would die before collecting retirement. Now the average lifespan is 80. And the median age of the population is older than ever. Not really much to do with an "unproductive" population. Except that retirees are unproductive I gues…

> In the 1960's, the average lifespan was in the 60s Yes. At birth. The remaining life expectancy at 30/40/50/60 has not increased nearly as much as you would think from the increase in average lifespan at birth.

For Switzerland life expectancy for men went from 26 years at 50 years old in 1981 to 33.1 at the same age in 2021. That's more than 7 years. (At birth it increased from 72.4 to 81.6 at bit more than 9 years).

So can we now please stop to mention all the time that the increase in life expectancy is only caused by infant mortality reduction when it's clearly not the case?