Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

msn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 199 posts

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#91

Post by antihero »

shmel wrote: post #85
thih9 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give a specific example? I’m curious if it was useful because of the AI’s skills, or perhaps it was the conversation itself that helped, like in rubber duck debugging[1] or journaling. In any case, interested to hear more details. [1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging

I find ChatGPT incredibly useful to learn the vocabulary of an unfamiliar area. Often basic information in the area I know very little about can be found easily once you know the right keywords. Even if ChatGPT gets something wrong, it does pattern matching well enough to tell me something like "yes, there is a well-known concept that matches your vague noob description, it is called X". It works well in CS where I h…

When learning a new thing it’s very good for compiling knowledge from lots of sources and laying it out in a good format. As long as it’s easy to verify when it screws up.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#92

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

sebzim4500 wrote: post #57
boolit wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a critical insight. Whenever I ask an LLM about a topic I’m knowledgeable about, I can detect that it spews a load of nonsense. Talking to people in other fields, e.g., history and literature, they say it’s the same for them. LLMs are only useful if you know the topic you’re asking questions about. Otherwise, they generate so much nonsense that you cannot verify, that trusting it becomes a liability.

Depends what the topic is. IME it hallucines rarely when asked practical programming questions but basically constantly when asked math questions beyond basic calculus.

The more abstract or nuanced something is, the less capable it seems to be unless you have a domain specific LLM trained on a corpus of quality data.

As a business owner with both applied experience and formal education on both the tech and the business sides, I wouldn’t trust random LLM-generated advice on business. There are nuances and a certain humanity in good business that an LLM is unlikely to pick up. And the Internet is filled with horrible advice and useless insight on running a business that it can’t distinguish from good advice and valuable insight.

My advice to anyone seriously considering a business is that a course or reading a good survey text on business will pay off in ways that ChatGPT can’t (yet?) give you.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#93

Post by williamcotton »

Jensson wrote: post #41
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #37

Software engineer here trying to start a startup. The amount of business advice GPT-4 has given me is immeasurable. I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Kind of like an AI CEO advising me on what to do next.

> I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Probably in large part because you can't verify when its wrong since that isn't your area of expertise, so those advice looks better to you. You should assume your org will be the same quality as a program written by a non-technical person using an LLM if you do it that way.

Business ideas can be tested so this epistemic haze isn’t as much of an issue as you’re making it out to be especially when error rates are taken into consideration.

I have a friend who has business experience and has been getting verifiably helpful marketing advice from LLMs.

Sales are up. That’s all that matters for any set of instructions: does it lead to the expected end result.

These “do LLMs always hallucinate” questions are in the category of “do humans have a soul”. This is fine and dandy but the conversation doesn’t always need to go there as there is practical utility to discuss as well.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#94

Post by antihero »

vessenes wrote: post #23

A fair number of r/antiwork type takes on this below. Since this is HackerNews, let's follow through the logic -- if the AI you're running is the CEO, who are you? You're the owner / shareholder / (board if you want to be). This wave of AI is like giving a superpower to people who can direct/imagine/realize what they want, describe it, and (for now) glue together the output of the AI. A lot of the work is ongoing thi…

We’re re-learning that things like art have value beyond the end result. The story and person behind the creation is as important as the creation itself, and this is something AI can never replace by virtue of being artificial. Software is entirely about its end function, and this in many ways more replaceable.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#95

Post by antihero »

bee_rider wrote: post #43
jmkni wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalism is an interesting one as, in a way, the most important thing isn’t being correct/accurate/imformative etc, it’s getting clicks AI is already very good at writing clickbait nonsense, and if an AI can pump that out faster than a real person can, it’s game over

Actual journalists, like the people that go out and follow leads, interview people… ya know, investigate—they’ll be a little harder to replace with AI since their job happens in the meat-space. Hot-take writers and other people whose job is opinion having might have more trouble.

Basically AI can replace the garbage easily.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#96

Post by [deleted] »

shmel wrote: post #72
Jensson wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Probably in large part because you can't verify when its wrong since that isn't your area of expertise, so those advice looks better to you. You should assume your org will be the same quality as a program written by a non-technical person using an LLM if you do it that way.

That's a good point, but I think it's important to critically analyze any information you find online. Anything I read online might be bullshit, and yet I've learned a lot from internet. And many other people have as well. I personally see ChatGPT as a better and faster search engine. If I need something basic, it's often on point and almost instant. If I need intricate advanced details about a niche topic, yes, it c…

[deleted]

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#97

Post by anileated »

hifromwork wrote: post #87
anileated wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Let me just use a glorified autocomplete instead of learning a subject domain or craft” seems like the opposite of hacker spirit and curiosity.

"Let's learn this new modern tool and how I can utilise it to fulfill my goals, while avoiding its shortcomings and flaws" sounds like the epitome of hacker spirit and curiosity. "Let's discredit this new technology as glorified autocomplete, and pretend it doesn't exist" is the opposite.

If it implies not having to learn anything new (or learning as little as possible) in order to get a result fast, then the correct term is “script-kiddie spirit” not “hacker spirit”.

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#99

Post by latexr »

Jensson wrote: post #41
aussieguy1234 wrote: post #37

Software engineer here trying to start a startup. The amount of business advice GPT-4 has given me is immeasurable. I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Kind of like an AI CEO advising me on what to do next.

> I'd say I'm getting 10x more non technical business advice in multiple areas than I'm getting with the technical stuff. Probably in large part because you can't verify when its wrong since that isn't your area of expertise, so those advice looks better to you. You should assume your org will be the same quality as a program written by a non-technical person using an LLM if you do it that way.

> Probably in large part because you can't verify when its wrong since that isn't your area of expertise, so those advice looks better to you.

Which is a kind of Gell-Mann Amnesia. Which, I just noticed, has “LLM” in the name.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

Re: If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your CEO

#100

Post by tossandthrow »

anileated wrote: post #88
tossandthrow wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love to understand this better. Why do you think it is anti-curiosity to use LLMs? The original commenter did not say they used it for producing content, so and auto complete is not really precise, is it? You could say that it is an advanced, stochastic knowledge-retrieval system. Does the workings of such merit your curiosity? Does the workings of compression algorithms merit your curiosity? Or are you merel…

It sounded like the author is not trying to learn, say, how to run a business, but instead just proxies output of an unthinking tool. After the former, you come out with new knowledge and skill. After the latter, you come out none the wiser. > Does the workings of such merit your curiosity? Not really, if the workings of such are well-understood (like in case of LLMs). > Or are you merely and ignorant person already…

> ... but instead just proxies output of an unthinking tool. After the former, you come out with new knowledge and skill. After the latter, you come out none the wiser.

This reads like "bla bla bla" without any support. Let's try to dissect what you are saying

1. You are saying that LLMs are "unthinking tools" what is that? It does appear to be a made up word. What does it mean?

2. You set up a dichotomy between using this "unthinking tool" and running a business. Can you please point me to the passage where the commenter is saying that they are only doing one or the other, and not both?

3. You say that you become non the wiser by using this "unthinking tool". Would you extend that to all similar activities? Such as reading a book, reason blog articles, receiving lectures etc?

> but you need to check who would be ignorant after what I outlined in the beginning of my comment.

After you establishing false dichotomies and using non-existing words? You demonstrate neither being able to reason or use knowledge. The hallucinations from an LLM is strictly more useful that the hallucinations from you - At least they can be corrected.

Post reply on HN