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AI and the Automation of Work

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Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#81

Post by js8 »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #73
FeepingCreature wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An autonomous robot cleaning the dishes on its own in an unfamiliar kitchen without breaking anything: how many years? What's your bet?

So you mean like something you can wheel in and install or a humanoid style robot you could use in any kitchen? Cause in theory you're just talking about a dishwasher lol. If you mean a robot that could clean in any kitchen without breaking anything, I'd say at least 20 years. As in you could move it from kitchen to kitchen with no install needs. I suppose another way to look at it is this: how many businesses use ro…

I can imagine a "box", say 1x1x2 meters, that you get in your home, it will have a plexiglass on it, and inside, it will have several AI-controlled arms, and you will be able to command it to fix anything in that space. Not really sure about cooking, but you could ask for example to fix your trousers, or repair a notebook, or make a fitting for water tap, and so on, and it would autonomously do it (it would ask to order some tools and materials and you would bring them to it). These could also be modular so that they could repair themselves in a limited way.

There would also be a larger "boxes" available for fixing larger things. For example, your washing machine broke up, you put it into the "communal" box that is like 6x6 meters, and inside it, it will repair it. Or you could have a communal box that works like a kitchen (but IMHO the biggest problem with AI kitchen is that we cannot easily automate the human taste and smell).

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#82

Post by bbbobbb »

js8 wrote: post #76
shepherdjerred wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the gap between a Co-pilot written test and a human-written test? Are tests written by co-pilot better than no tests? Developers generally hate writing tests, so I suspect more and more unit tests will be generated. I've worked with someone who does this and it seems insane to me, although I never got to see the generated tests they were referring to, so I can't give specifics.

> What's the gap between a Co-pilot written test and a human-written test? IMHO the gap is that human-written test understands the (unwritten) specification (which might be as simple as "program doesn't crash"), and tests the program against it. I am of the (pretty radical, it seems) opinion that the (especially unit) tests that just take the code as the specification, instead of having specification coming from else…

I agree with you about ideal approach to tests and spec but sometimes the "specification coming from elsewhere" is pretty vague, incomplete or simply lost in time.

In that case, if I have code that satisfies that specification as demonstrated by say acceptance testing or years of use, I will happily opt for test that take the code as specification. I am not using those tests to prove the code "correct" but to prevent regressions during refactor or new feature development later on. Worse case scenario they should keep the program as broken as it is now or has been for years.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#83

Post by Barrin92 »

shepherdjerred wrote: post #41

I am pretty concerned about AGI. I love computer science and programming. I would love to get into research after I finish my Masters in a couple of years. I think it's fair to say that _some day_ we will achieve AGI. It might not be in 10 years, or 1000, but eventually we'll get there. When we do have AGI, what would that mean for someone like me? Would there be any reason to have programmers (or similar) at all? Wo…

Chess engines overtook human chess players more than a decade or two ago and human chess is thriving. Activities don't become less rewarding for you simply because someone else is better at it, even if that's a machine. A robotic arm can probably lift more than I do, doesn't take my enjoyment from working out away. And people enjoy the human aspect and narrative in any activity in its own right.

And that's the worst case in a way, because a chess computer is a really stupid machine. Getting beaten by minimax is kind of annoying. AGIs on the other hand if they ever exist will be very fascinating entities indeed and I wouldn't mind if they're better at anything than I am. And the same goes for scientific research. I haven't stopped doing math because Terence Tao is better than I'll ever be. How many people can seriously claim to be at the frontiers of science? The value in learning isn't in being the best guy or girl there is.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#84

Post by raincole »

danmaz74 wrote: post #72
dsign wrote: post #50

It's not ChatGPT what we should be putting in our forecasts, but its successors. And, from what I have been reading, our AI folk are coming with better performers all the time by chaining multiple neural networks, "making modular brains", so to speak. Any argument that starts by saying "ChatGPT is very bad at X, humans will always do X," is flawed IMO. So I think that any job that can be done by a non-human is up for…

"A security guard at an airport can be a a machine gun on wheels" - are you serious? That is a job which is 99.99% about understanding human intentions in confusing and ambiguous situations, and where making a mistake will literally kill people. It's the last job you want to automate with "AI".

It's a very good example to understand how "AI evangelists" think. Anyone with even slightest common senes would immediately understands why it's a bad idea, but AI evangelists just can't.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#85

Post by spaceman_2020 »

rushingcreek wrote: post #77
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The combination of ChatGPT and Phind helped me, a noob with 8 months of coding knowledge, build an app with real paying users and revenue. I would have never accomplished this on my own, and now I have a working prototype to find co-founders and possible investors.

Founder of Phind here. Hearing something like this really touches me and the team and this is exactly why we do what we do.

The Pair Programmer feature is absolutely fantastic and a massive gamechanger. It helped me figure out the architecture for a new app I'm planning. I showed it to a senior developer in my coworking space and he said - in his own words - "yep, that's how I would approach it too".

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#86

Post by keiferski »

abhaynayar wrote: post #55

I had bought into the GPT-4 hype. I used GPT-4 on ChatGPT Plus for two months, but then I unsubscribed because I wasn't using it as much as I thought I would. It's certainly a very interesting technology. But in it's current form, I just don't see it replacing most jobs. Will it replace jobs if we scale further? I don't know, but my intuition says no. I feel that we will need some other major breakthroughs in AI to g…

Yes, my experience is that most hype comes from people that don't actually work in the jobs they claim will be replaced. Writers, for example.

While generative AI does make writing some things more efficient, it almost always has a bland, generic style that is immediately recognizable. The only jobs it will be replacing are ones that didn't require much effort in the first place.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#87

Post by js8 »

bbbobbb wrote: post #82
js8 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the gap between a Co-pilot written test and a human-written test? IMHO the gap is that human-written test understands the (unwritten) specification (which might be as simple as "program doesn't crash"), and tests the program against it. I am of the (pretty radical, it seems) opinion that the (especially unit) tests that just take the code as the specification, instead of having specification coming from else…

I agree with you about ideal approach to tests and spec but sometimes the "specification coming from elsewhere" is pretty vague, incomplete or simply lost in time. In that case, if I have code that satisfies that specification as demonstrated by say acceptance testing or years of use, I will happily opt for test that take the code as specification. I am not using those tests to prove the code "correct" but to prevent…

> I am not using those tests to prove the code "correct" but to prevent regressions during refactor or new feature development later on.

Then you don't really need to have the tests written, what you need to do is to compare the output and behavior of the two code bases before and after refactoring. I mean why use a low fidelity approximation of the original (i.e. test that only works in some cases), if you already have the original at hand? (After all, how can you predict ahead of time, which features of the original version will need to be tested as preserved in the new version? Isn't writing regression tests in advance a form of premature optimization?)

From the view point of testing, you're comparing two implementations. So again there needs to be some understanding which one is the correct specification - the original one or the new one?

It would be more useful if the industry actually treated the two cases - i.e. testing against specification and regression testing of the refactored code - as completely separate, instead of trying to push unit tests for everything. Because in the latter case, ideally you can prove that the refactored code is doing identical thing, which is stronger than testing.

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#89

Post by goatlover »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #78

The main fallacy with this article is assuming that generative AI is just another tool that we use. But what happens when the tool becomes far more capable intellectually than the person wielding the tool? Why have that person around? What would they do that the AI can't do? We're not there yet of course and short term this dynamic plays out of tools enhancing productivity and lowering cost. But at some point it flip…

The question we should be asking is why do we want AI that can do anything faster, better, cheaper than us? Corporations would like to not have to pay labor costs, and some would argue a society where nobody has to work is utopian. But do you trust governments like the US to figure out UBI? Do we really have any sort of sociological understanding of what such a society would be like? Do we have an understanding of what war will look like?

One could argue that AI should only ever be tool to enhance human capabilities, not something to replace humans. Why do we want to do that? For whose benefit?

Re: AI and the Automation of Work

#90

Post by jayant_kaushik »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #64
abhaynayar wrote: post #55

I had bought into the GPT-4 hype. I used GPT-4 on ChatGPT Plus for two months, but then I unsubscribed because I wasn't using it as much as I thought I would. It's certainly a very interesting technology. But in it's current form, I just don't see it replacing most jobs. Will it replace jobs if we scale further? I don't know, but my intuition says no. I feel that we will need some other major breakthroughs in AI to g…

The combination of ChatGPT and Phind helped me, a noob with 8 months of coding knowledge, build an app with real paying users and revenue. I would have never accomplished this on my own, and now I have a working prototype to find co-founders and possible investors.

Would you mind sharing the app link? Curious to see what you made with the help of AI.
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