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I wish GPT4 had never happened

chaudhry.notion.site

871–880 of 1001 posts

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can actually be certain that humans work the other way since we ran huge experiments in labs called the Soviet Union and China. In those experiments we found out that people worked way less/not at all when there was no economic incentive to do so.

That’s not true. Many companies people work at provide them little to no incentive to work harder or better, yet still a lot of people try to do so. Lots of places have almost no possibility of promotion just the ability to go elsewhere. Some professions like teaching, nursing pharmacy treat all workers as interchangeable with no performance incentives.

People have an incentive in those cases. To improve themselves so that they can get hired at another company or in an industry with more demand.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#873
post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has more to do with discrimination against the unemployed.

Discrimination against poor people, more specifically. No one cares how unemployed you are if you're rich. Or at least well off enough to be reclassified as "eccentric" and thus okay.

Eh I’ve read plenty of essays by people who have retired early and it was not good for their psyche even though they were loaded.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#874
post #435
post #259

> I don’t see a long-term career in software anymore. Any dreams I had of earning decent money as a software engineer are slowly fading. Lex Fridman in his podcast said “if you’re anxious about GPT4 its probably because you’re a shitty programmer”. I mean, I’m not the smartest in the room but I have generated value with the software I’ve made. And was convinced that I’ll make decent money as long as put in the work.…

The mediocre don't deserve to make a living?

I never hear any business or firm proudly announcing that they hire mediocre engineers, always and only the best who are tested and assessed with rigour.

GPT-4 just replaces the low-hanging fruit, mediocre engineers and finally exposes inflated titles and impostors.

Like I said, its time for them to learn to adapt.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#875
post #685

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…

> 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.).

It's because communism has the same issue Luddites have. Unless everyone is onboard, it doesn't work.

You can't stop people from trading between themselves for profit in a communist country without the threat of violence. This is what leads to all the other problems.

I mean Marx literally says you need to cull off the non believers for communism to work.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#876

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is not an economic system, it is a description of fundamental economics. Countries can have a highly regulated form of capitalism where trade and ownership is strictly controlled… and they’re often called socialist or communist, or a laissez faire system. However, so long as people are using land, buildings structures, designing equipment… the laws of capitalism will apply.

> However, so long as people are using land, buildings structures, designing equipment… the laws of capitalism will apply. Capitalism is the system where someone can claim ownership of land/buildings/ideas(typically due to prior ownership) aka "capital". If the laws don't allow someone to make and hold that claim of private ownership, how would the "laws of capitalism" still apply?

Capitalism isn't "a system" in the sense that it's defined. It's the default you're left with when you get rid of all the other crap.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#877
post #237

This sentiment reminds me of Burdens. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ “[on the topic of a patient with moderate brain damage] back in the Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness, in a nice tribe with Dunbar’s number of people, there would be no problem … he could just hang out and live in a cave and gather roots and berries and maybe hunt buffalo…. “But society came and paved over the place where all t…

The promise was that if we were clever and educated enough we could stay above water. Now I think the deal has been altered, and I think the people who aren't going to be screwed are doing blue collar jobs. We still can't get reliable self driving, so I don't think a robot will be a nurse any time soon, or a carpenter.

I think it was foolish for us to have been making and believing each others’ predictions about where automation will happen. In retrospect, the core question was “how automatable is this activity”, and we were instead answering the question “how much do humans get paid for doing this activity”.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#878

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has been the promise over and over again And over and over again, we've underestimated and then normalized the capacity of our institutions, made of otherwise decent people, to achieve outcomes that we would call abhorrent if they were carried out by an individual. So the door closes on that opportunity because we fail to act. If we're ever going to walk through that door, companies need to fear us, because th…

> they sure as hell aren't going to share with us out of the goodness of their hearts You know you can buy stock, right? And, as a shareholder, those companies will give you the profit?

That might be an option for you and me, but it's not an option for Priya.

And that's a problem for you and me because our system has shown to be very effective at concentrating wealth at the top. Most likely it'll later find a different way to transition us from have to have-not, but even if it doesnt we'll end up retiring into a world mostly populated by people who have more to gain by turning their back on our system than participating in it.

Squabbling over ownership of abstractions is a lose-lose scenario without some degree of solidarity keeping the zero sum games in check.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#879
Priya should get the hang of the AI assistant and start using it before she falls way, way behind. It sucks for lot of people but you have to make the best of it. the future is uncertain for many of us, but we cannot give up.

Re: I wish GPT4 had never happened

#880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can actually be certain that humans work the other way since we ran huge experiments in labs called the Soviet Union and China. In those experiments we found out that people worked way less/not at all when there was no economic incentive to do so.

That’s not true. Many companies people work at provide them little to no incentive to work harder or better, yet still a lot of people try to do so. Lots of places have almost no possibility of promotion just the ability to go elsewhere. Some professions like teaching, nursing pharmacy treat all workers as interchangeable with no performance incentives.

I can tell you that there is no way I’d be doing what I do if it wasn’t for the money. I’d be developing useless keyboard firmware or some other junk no one but me would care about. It would provide minimal value to the world.
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