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I wish GPT4 had never happened

chaudhry.notion.site

671–680 of 1001 posts

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#671
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we could just stop being economically gaslighted it would help. The economic system can't be simultaneously unproductive enough to require us to keep raising the retirement age and so productive that job loss is a big problem. It is possible that a political war on labor is being waged at both ends.

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…

>Not really much to do with an "unproductive" population.

If we pretended that there had been 0% increase in economic productivity since then then, then yes, changing demographics are a problem.

This is indeed, what most justifications of increasing the retirement age quietly assume. It's probably quite easy to assume because the % of increase in productivity captured by the working class since 1970s as wealth has actually been quite small.

Compounded economic growth since the 1960s has, I think, been something of the order of 200% though.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#672

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.

Yes: open source. Open source has proved itself to be vastly superior to closed source development models.

It does not generate obscene wealth disparities though—and some see that as a bug.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#673
A coder should be worried about GPT-4, but not a software engineer. A software engineer is like 50% about networking and listening to client needs, requiring being attentive and with social skills (in so many meetings...) and that's completely outside of the scope of a GPT-4 AI. The other 50% is trying to meet that as close as possible while maybe also offering ideas they didn't think of, for added value to them.

A guy who can code great generic stuff with GPT-4 but don't particularly _enjoy_ integrating it with client systems and being attentive to their particular circumstances and needs is no threat at all, at least not in the field of business that I am in and have been for the last 20 years.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#674
post #650

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i did that, i got injured at work and now can't do physical labor. Trades are hell on the body and bosses will toss you aside without any care. Join a Union if you're gonna go into the trades, i would've had protection and better safety. I took so many people to the ER for work injuries that were preventable but the bosses skimp on everything.

What would you say is the safest trade as far as risk of injury ?

Not OP, but I’d assume something at a nuclear plant (or something else that’s govt owned.)

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#675
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so refreshing to see someone recognizing the mass-spread denial of HN commentariat on GPT4. What HN commentariat doesn't realize is that many of them will be made redundant. And "many new jobs are created" is such a bloated, empty statement in the wake of GPT4 like techs. We all know that all technological improvements in recent decades have led to more inequality . No questions about that. LLMs, AI will lead mo…

Agreed with both you and GP. The denial is a normal emotional response. It's not strange to cling to your decades of professional experience and skillset. It's just that, now really is not the time for emotional responses. It's time to start running away from the crowd so that you're one of those not made redundant. You can grieve the lost innocence of days past later.

I myself, am at crossroads.

I do Computer Vision research for a company, and wanted to go to Academia (in US/UK/NA/EU). That's a too risky career choice now, and has always been. What if I am not as brilliant as I think and cannot meaningfully contribute to Science? (Or don't get tenure?) Wanted to do either ML + fundamental Science or Edge AI.

Thinking of going to med school. I am sure I can qualify. So thinking of preparing for that while keeping my industry job.

Another option is going into Administration, i.e. government jobs, by qualifying something called UPSC (I am in India).

I fully understand what's going on and I am under no denial that many jobs in many sectors will be made redundant and competition will skyrocket. Societal turmoil is inevitable.

I am just 23 and weighing in my options. My days are so emotional and full of dilemmas and trilemmas.

I keep myself sane by doing my job, side hustle, dogs, family, and friends. I will be depressed if I ponder too much into these.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#676

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.

Personally as a noob programmer, I feel like a superhuman because of GPT-4. Feel like my creativity has been unleashed and I can compete with the big boys.

I feel the same after programming for about 25+ years. Now I get an idea, ask GPT how to do it, or if there are other options, choose and adapt to my use case.

[edit] after reading the article... Why Priya couldn't use GPT and do the job much faster?

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The words "most" and "many" there are doing some herculean lifting. Look at the kind of people who do not have to work. Do they still work? No. Some sit on a beach and never lift a finger again, some become creatives and some try to recreate their successes again. None work what would be an engaging and productful job at a take-away joint.

That is in fact not true. Plenty of retirees seek out job-like things. I have a couple of examples. A small one is my dad. He was a software developer, but thanks to Y2K consulting, he made bank and retired early. After, he spent half the year in Mexico. One of the friends he made there was a teacher. My dad ended up volunteering in the school. He had a part-time-job-like schedule and did teacher's aide things. He lo…

So what you're saying is that when people have more guaranteed income uncoupled from a job they have to do, in this case in the form of a retirement, they can and do choose to do lots of meaningful, enjoyable work? Which I think is the original point in this discussion?

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#678
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…

Shell scripting and JavaScript are strengths, any kind of server-side language like Scala or C# it really falls apart quite quickly. I think that integrating into existing APIs is the Achilles' heel, GPT-4 doesn't seem to do any better here either. It makes me wonder if someday we might not get better results completely eschewing libraries altogether and letting the transformers generate literally everything--perhaps…

I’ve also been wondering if no framework coding will be more productive for LLM driven software.

How many times have frameworks like React changed since it was created? A changing framework means the LLM may mix training from multiple versions and create errors. Whereas libraries that don’t change can produce consistent results. So use stable libraries that choose backwards compatibility at any cost, over the ones that change with the times.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#679

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 .

> 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.

I would go fucking insane if I didn’t have a purpose. Jobs are necessary part of life.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#680

AI will probably be the initiator for universal basic income to become widespread, at least in rich countries like the EU etc. Poor countries will most likely follow suit, but it will take a while. The end result, hopefully, will be a world where AI is a true benefit for the world population, but it will require a change in mindset.

> Poor countries will most likely follow suit, but it will take a while.

The reason why poor countries are poor is in large part because they are economically and socially structured in ways that make it very difficult for them to take advantage of technological advancement, and as great as ChatGPT is, I think it will have very little impact on the productivity of poor countries.

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