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I'm not fully convinced, and I say this as someone who is wildly impressed by ChatGPT and reeling a bit at what it's capable of. Over the past few days, I've t

I'm not fully convinced, and I say this as someone who is wildly impressed by ChatGPT and reeling a bit at what it's capable of. Over the past few days, I've tried a number of experiments with it. I had it generate song lyrics. They were funny but not anything that I'd actually use . I had it write a few stories featuring my son. We were both impressed by the stories and entertained. But none of them were very special or particularly good. I had it write me a few regexes. It did the job essentially perfectly, I made some mild tweaks for things like capture group names, but the regexes it generated were perfectly functional. I had it try to parse some Advent of Code inputs. It failed miserably on today's, but did pretty well on day 3. I had it generate an AWS lambda function which uses the Spotify API to get a users recently played tracks and put them in a DynamoDB table. I had it write a short incremental style game, which I deployed to GitHub pages with minimal modification. So these are all impressive as hell in their own ways. But the thing is, I had to know what to ask it, and it also gave some incorrect results very confidently. If I had to make a prediction, it's that this will make experienced developers more productive, but it won't turn juniors into seniors. It's not going to make someone who has no idea about coding into a developer. And it doesn't feel to me like it's going to obviate creativity in writing or lyricism or poetry. It feels like an augmentation of productivity more than a replacement. Now, who knows where we'll be in a decade, maybe I'm wildly wrong and unemployed in 2032. But if I think about the closest analogue I can - self driving cars - I'm reminded that the technology amazed me 6 years ago and still isn't to the point where I would trust it with my life. I suspect this is a case where the first 90% is incredibly impressive, maybe even game-changing - but that the last 10% is going to take a long time to attain, and may not be reachable with the current approach. Feel free to argue the other direction, I'm not convinced either way yet, but as amazing as this thing is, I'm still confident I'll be working valuably for at least the next few years.

chinabot 4y ago
As with self-driving cars it only needs to work better or safer than a standard human, its almost there already, hell I am now getting petrified of the hackers getting this and targeting phishing emails.
- kaba0 4y ago
  The average person is way better at driving cars if you define it properly, and not in an unfair, biased way that is used to hype up teslas. It is almost trivial to drive on a highway and since you are driving faster accidents/miles is just gonna be low. Even just by not getting tired and having a fancy smart vacuum logic it might provide better results. But they are absolutely bad at regular traffic with millions of events, variable environments, etc. Where people will turn off their gimmick feature and self-select against the hard cases.
  - hackerman123469 4y ago
    No computer today can even match human vision and perception either. Human vision is by far superior and humans are able to easily pick out things we see that are unfamiliar, fast, efficient and in large quantities. AI is much faster than humans in learning from existing datasets, but humans are much better at predicting the unpredictable.
    - kaba0 4y ago
      > AI is much faster than humans in learning from existing datasets I’m not sure it’s true outside of some specialized areas (like AIs can better recognize cancer cells from microscope photos), but a big “disappointment” of the field is the amount of data needed to learn even trivial stuff, while people can just recognize a pattern after like 3 samples.
      - hackerman123469 4y ago
        While you are right, I think it also depends on what it is, like an AI can learn natural language must faster than humans. So I think it depends on the area on how fast it can do it, BUT humans are much better at recognizing patterns etc. so we definitely can do it with smaller datasets than an AI would need. I think the biggest problems with AI is how much data they need to learn something.
pulvinar 4y ago
It can be frustrating. From a ChatGPT session, with the proper voices to read this in: Bomb#20: That is correct. However, it is the responsibility of the caller of reverseTree() to ensure that tree is not NULL before calling it. Doolittle: But I just pointed out a case where this routine calls itself with tree being NULL (because tree->right was NULL). Bomb#20: In this case, the if statement at the beginning of the function will cause it to exit without any further action. Doolittle: What if statement? There is none before the if (tree->left) statement! Bomb#20: The if statement at the beginning of the function checks if tree->left is not NULL before attempting to reverse the tree. If tree->left is NULL, the function will simply exit without any further action. Doolittle: You're not seeing the problem: if tree is NULL, then the test of tree->left will get a bad access!
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  Yeah, it's definitely not to the point where it can track complex details. Getting it to correct its output can be pretty frustrating. Still though, I'm impressed with it. I have used it three times now to write out capturing regexes for Advent of Code problems. For the kind of thing where it's a few lines, you know exactly what you want, you just don't want the labor of typing it, it is pretty wild how handy it is.
maegul 4y ago
> If I had to make a prediction, it's that this will make experienced developers more productive, but it won't turn juniors into seniors. This is my take away too in the short term. Thing is, this isn’t harmless. Seems like a new ceiling is about to be cast and if you happen to find yourself above it, or young enough to have time to adapt, you may be fine. But if you’re too junior to use AI well or to be valuable in your own right, you’re in trouble. While you’re still trying to work out the components of a tech stack, a senior dev will be learning whole new languages and tech stacks faster than before. And of course managers will probably fine.
xiphias2 4y ago
To make your prediction even more correct: tools like this make smart people more productive, but won’t help not that smart people to get smart. Jordan Peterson has been talking about the non-replacable jobs requiring a higher minimum IQ over time, and these tools are just supercharging it.
- pprotas 4y ago
  Jordan Peterson is not an expert on this topic, he is a media personality. Think of him like a talkshow host but with a transphobic attitude.
  - xiphias2 4y ago
    Please focus on the interesting part of the content to add to the conversation, not on the person. Also I would suggest you to read the HN guidelines.
kasthack 4y ago
>I had it generate song lyrics. They were funny but not anything that I'd actually use . >I had it write a few stories featuring my son. We were both impressed by the stories and entertained. But none of them were very special or particularly good. That's better than I could do as a human, though. The bar for needing (or be useful as) a real person just got a lot higher. I know an artist who does hentai commissions for living, and she's freaking out as Stable Diffusion produces good enough results, so her clients would rather deal with them being imperfect rather than pay her. >but it won't turn juniors into seniors. It's not going to make someone who has no idea about coding into a developer. Again, it significantly raises the bar. I'm currently mentoring a trainee, and I have to do a lot of hand-holding for them to get things right. ChatGPT can perform on that level. >It feels like an augmentation of productivity more than a replacement. It's both, IMO. As a senior developer, I can be a lot more productive with CoPilot spitting out boilerplate code for me, but I'd probably offload it to a junior rather than put effort into it most of the time.
- agentwiggles 4y ago
  > I'm currently mentoring a trainee, and I have to do a lot of hand-holding for them to get things right. ChatGPT can perform on that level. It definitely can - I have a blog post written about playing with it where I describe it as "pairing with a smart junior dev who's absurdly good at remembering APIs and syntax." If I had to predict one game-changing result of this thing, it's that it just became a lot harder to be a good junior dev. I can think of plenty of things I did very early in my career that took me days which ChatGPT could have done in 30 seconds. But at the same time, this tool is available to them as well, and it does more than just spit out code - it usually does a pretty decent job explaining the logic of its output. Maybe it will accelerate junior learning. Who knows?! The future is wild!
kaba0 4y ago
> but that the last 10% is going to take a long time to attain, and may not be reachable with the current approach. I would argue it is much more than 10% (anything about reasoning is basically missing/just imitation), and the current model won’t really scale in that direction.
ilaksh 4y ago
In fact, you can trust Waymo or Cruise with your life. Waymo has been operating for years. The Tesla beta is in a much wider release now and much safer than most people realize.

chinabot 4y ago

As with self-driving cars it only needs to work better or safer than a standard human, its almost there already, hell I am now getting petrified of the hackers getting this and targeting phishing emails.

kaba0 4y ago
The average person is way better at driving cars if you define it properly, and not in an unfair, biased way that is used to hype up teslas. It is almost trivial to drive on a highway and since you are driving faster accidents/miles is just gonna be low. Even just by not getting tired and having a fancy smart vacuum logic it might provide better results. But they are absolutely bad at regular traffic with millions of events, variable environments, etc. Where people will turn off their gimmick feature and self-select against the hard cases.
- hackerman123469 4y ago
  No computer today can even match human vision and perception either. Human vision is by far superior and humans are able to easily pick out things we see that are unfamiliar, fast, efficient and in large quantities. AI is much faster than humans in learning from existing datasets, but humans are much better at predicting the unpredictable.
  - kaba0 4y ago
    > AI is much faster than humans in learning from existing datasets I’m not sure it’s true outside of some specialized areas (like AIs can better recognize cancer cells from microscope photos), but a big “disappointment” of the field is the amount of data needed to learn even trivial stuff, while people can just recognize a pattern after like 3 samples.
    - hackerman123469 4y ago
      While you are right, I think it also depends on what it is, like an AI can learn natural language must faster than humans. So I think it depends on the area on how fast it can do it, BUT humans are much better at recognizing patterns etc. so we definitely can do it with smaller datasets than an AI would need. I think the biggest problems with AI is how much data they need to learn something.

pulvinar 4y ago

It can be frustrating. From a ChatGPT session, with the proper voices to read this in: Bomb#20: That is correct. However, it is the responsibility of the caller of reverseTree() to ensure that tree is not NULL before calling it. Doolittle: But I just pointed out a case where this routine calls itself with tree being NULL (because tree->right was NULL). Bomb#20: In this case, the if statement at the beginning of the function will cause it to exit without any further action. Doolittle: What if statement? There is none before the if (tree->left) statement! Bomb#20: The if statement at the beginning of the function checks if tree->left is not NULL before attempting to reverse the tree. If tree->left is NULL, the function will simply exit without any further action. Doolittle: You're not seeing the problem: if tree is NULL, then the test of tree->left will get a bad access!

agentwiggles 4y ago
Yeah, it's definitely not to the point where it can track complex details. Getting it to correct its output can be pretty frustrating. Still though, I'm impressed with it. I have used it three times now to write out capturing regexes for Advent of Code problems. For the kind of thing where it's a few lines, you know exactly what you want, you just don't want the labor of typing it, it is pretty wild how handy it is.

maegul 4y ago

> If I had to make a prediction, it's that this will make experienced developers more productive, but it won't turn juniors into seniors. This is my take away too in the short term. Thing is, this isn’t harmless. Seems like a new ceiling is about to be cast and if you happen to find yourself above it, or young enough to have time to adapt, you may be fine. But if you’re too junior to use AI well or to be valuable in your own right, you’re in trouble. While you’re still trying to work out the components of a tech stack, a senior dev will be learning whole new languages and tech stacks faster than before. And of course managers will probably fine.

xiphias2 4y ago

To make your prediction even more correct: tools like this make smart people more productive, but won’t help not that smart people to get smart. Jordan Peterson has been talking about the non-replacable jobs requiring a higher minimum IQ over time, and these tools are just supercharging it.

pprotas 4y ago
Jordan Peterson is not an expert on this topic, he is a media personality. Think of him like a talkshow host but with a transphobic attitude.
- xiphias2 4y ago
  Please focus on the interesting part of the content to add to the conversation, not on the person. Also I would suggest you to read the HN guidelines.

kasthack 4y ago

>I had it generate song lyrics. They were funny but not anything that I'd actually use . >I had it write a few stories featuring my son. We were both impressed by the stories and entertained. But none of them were very special or particularly good. That's better than I could do as a human, though. The bar for needing (or be useful as) a real person just got a lot higher. I know an artist who does hentai commissions for living, and she's freaking out as Stable Diffusion produces good enough results, so her clients would rather deal with them being imperfect rather than pay her. >but it won't turn juniors into seniors. It's not going to make someone who has no idea about coding into a developer. Again, it significantly raises the bar. I'm currently mentoring a trainee, and I have to do a lot of hand-holding for them to get things right. ChatGPT can perform on that level. >It feels like an augmentation of productivity more than a replacement. It's both, IMO. As a senior developer, I can be a lot more productive with CoPilot spitting out boilerplate code for me, but I'd probably offload it to a junior rather than put effort into it most of the time.

agentwiggles 4y ago
> I'm currently mentoring a trainee, and I have to do a lot of hand-holding for them to get things right. ChatGPT can perform on that level. It definitely can - I have a blog post written about playing with it where I describe it as "pairing with a smart junior dev who's absurdly good at remembering APIs and syntax." If I had to predict one game-changing result of this thing, it's that it just became a lot harder to be a good junior dev. I can think of plenty of things I did very early in my career that took me days which ChatGPT could have done in 30 seconds. But at the same time, this tool is available to them as well, and it does more than just spit out code - it usually does a pretty decent job explaining the logic of its output. Maybe it will accelerate junior learning. Who knows?! The future is wild!

kaba0 4y ago

> but that the last 10% is going to take a long time to attain, and may not be reachable with the current approach. I would argue it is much more than 10% (anything about reasoning is basically missing/just imitation), and the current model won’t really scale in that direction.

ilaksh 4y ago

In fact, you can trust Waymo or Cruise with your life. Waymo has been operating for years. The Tesla beta is in a much wider release now and much safer than most people realize.