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I wish GPT4 had never happened

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Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#681

Post by adventured »

hunter-gatherer wrote: post #637
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think that is where the scare comes from though. It used to be that churning out good code really did take a lot of experience. But as we lower that bar, the value a computer programmer has may begin to diminish. If everyone can spit out 200 lines of code in a day, thrn hiw valuable are you, really? I analyze malware for a living, and don't consider myself a strong developer, though I can write programs, obviously.…

You used to have to be an expert/specialist to have direct access to a computer, or understand precisely how to give them commands to work with them over an expensive connection (and on a limited basis in terms of time and how many could do it).

That scarcity wasn't a good thing. People are drastically more empowered with computing today, the barriers were dropped in a rather extreme way (compared to where it started), and that is a good thing.

These are conceptual groupings of advancement. One layer of complexity is going to be removed (broadening access), there will be further advancement and complexity where the skilled group can navigate to in order to best unleash what they're capable of.

Writing the vast majority of code isn't special or super difficult (it's time consuming and mildly difficult at worst; quite obviously there are exceptions to that). There are a million plus software developers in the US alone. It's time to add new layers of complexity and advancement. Those million software developers will have to evolve, again, myself included.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#682

Post by visarga »

crop_rotation wrote: post #182
adhocmobility wrote: post #123

Hi everyone, author of the article here. I'm sorry if the article sounds overly pessimistic. I'm not making any claims with this article. I'm not proposing anything either. I do think technological progress is a good thing, even in this case. But I wrote this blog because I did have an emotional response to this technology, and wanted to pen down my thoughts. Its one thing to look at a report about the economic impac…

Thank you for penning down your emotional response. HN is mostly in denial of anything ChatGPT (most people haven't used GPT4 and keep pasting results of GPT3.5). The thing is that there is nothing other than denial that people can express. Saying that their jobs will become much less relevant is just too hard for almost anyone to swallow. People in this thread keep talking about productivity improvements, not realis…

This technology lowers the entry barrier to almost any field. It empowers self education, creative hacking and growth. Why are you making it sound like a disaster? We can scale our ambitions quickly and absorb the new productivity without losing jobs. We have not solved global warming, poverty or colonised the space. We have to scale AI billions of times. We have to survive the demographic crash. There's plenty of scope for AI to fill in without replacing humans.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#683

Post by ilyt »

qaq wrote: post #629
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.

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.

Housing situation isn't there because there isn't enough people to build houses...

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#684

Post by vc8f6vVV »

danShumway wrote: post #569
vc8f6vVV wrote: post #388

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…

> 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…

Let's start from basics. People need to eat, so somebody needs to make food. Those people need tools. Somebody needs to make tools. Now for this to work they need to make extra food and exchange it for tools. This exchange has been in development since before human existed (look at wolves pack) -- never perfect, but kind of worked. So you want to make something you like and nobody needs? No problem, go for it. Where are you supposed to get food? Do you want a government to pay you the basic income? That means those who make food will give it to you for free, which means they won't get tools, which in turn means they won't be able to make that food. Oops. In a balanced system you are never "taking more than giving" or vice versa, because, as you know, price is a result of supply/demand. How do you know you Java library is worth a breakfast?

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#685

Post by lumb63 »

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.

This problem isn’t specific to AI. Luddites were concerned about machines taking their jobs. Marx recognized the role of “capital” (of which AI is the intellectual type) in suppressing the incomes of the working class relative to the owning class. Both Marx and the Luddites conceived of different solutions.

One solution (the Luddite one) is to eschew the technology. If nobody adopts the technology, nobody has to, but nobody can benefit. On the contrary, if anyone adopts the technology, all can benefit, but all also have to suffer the negative impacts. Without everyone on board, the Luddite solution cannot work.

Marx saw a different solution: communism. If the state owns the means of production, the working class and owning class benefit equally. It’s unlikely that we ever move toward this, in my opinion, due to the other issues inherent to communism (unfair (from the perspective of most policy makers) distribution of resources, corruption, etc.).

We need to find a new solution; one which enables people to benefit from technology while minimizing the downsides, or at least localizing the downsides to those who choose to adopt it. Right now we have, IMO, one of the worst situations of both worlds: privatized benefits with publicized costs. For instance, any taxpayer funded bailout.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#686

Post by leros »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #679
Aaargh20318 wrote: post #29

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.

You could replace your job with pursuits of person interests. I would rather devote my life to a plethora of hobbies than a career.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#687

Post by throwaway6734 »

jerojero wrote: post #614
wouldbecouldbe wrote: post #479

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.

I wonder if people in Norway are as worried as people in America.

Probably not, but Norway is generally an anomaly. It's got massive natural resource wealth, a small homogeneous population, and is surrounded by allies and falls under the US security umbrella

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#688

Post by blitz »

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.

More apt to assume they think they’d be mind meld by Replicators than benefit from their development.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#689

Post by sandworm101 »

qaq wrote: post #666
bayarearefugee wrote: post #646

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is only a displacement if one assume that the total demand will remain the same, that professionals will be replaced by the cheaper AI while the total volume of work needing to be done remains steady. Take law, there are a great many legal activities that are not done today because of the cost of entry. AI will make lawyers cheaper. That will meant previous tasks that were forgone due to costs will now be financially possible. A small claim that wasn't worth a lawyer's time today will, in a future of cheaper AI-supported lawyers, be financial viable. Complex legal structures like trusts or life estates, once only available to the élite, may now be available to all. The next result may be an actual increase in the demand for lawyers as the total pool of work increases, both AI-possible and that which AI cannot do.

So too for complex accounting/insurance structures.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#690

Post by namarie »

caskstrength wrote: post #515
Moissanite wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.” No, it means "I am working to generate more wealth which flows predominantly to the owners of capital, who often do no work and sometimes have never done any work at all - can't we do something fairer than this?"

> No, it means "I am working to generate more wealth which flows predominantly to the owners of capital, who often do no work and sometimes have never done any work at all - can't we do something fairer than this?" It always starts with this, then the next step is "ohh we can't really tax rich people and corporations ('owners of capital' that you speak of) since they have a lot of ways to move their capital out of ou…

Over a hundred countries agreed to a 15% global minimum corporate tax rate starting this year. It's not nearly enough, but it's a start, and it shows we can tax rich people and corporations.
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