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One of the problems that I have with the "AI might replace some menial jobs, but people should aspire to bigger and better things" argument is that a lot of men

One of the problems that I have with the "AI might replace some menial jobs, but people should aspire to bigger and better things" argument is that a lot of menial jobs are training for those bigger and better things. "Sure, ChatGPT can write some basic code, but it can't come up with creative solutions like I can." Yeah, that's true. But how did I get to the point of being able to make creative solutions? Years of working in the trenches, learning all the ins and outs of how to code and not over-engineer that college never even had a hope of teaching me. Yes, nobody wants a life-long career developing formulaic CRUD apps, or writing catalog product descriptions, or making logos for every tom-dick-or-harry consulting shop with delusions of grandeur. But if you want to become a skilled developer, writer, or designer, you kinda need to grind through a lot of this bullshit work to grow a sense of taste to be any good at the higher-level work. So what happens when we cut off that pipeline of junior jobs? It's going to happen, and it's going to happen from the bottom, up. We're not going to see big corporations take risks on trying AI software developers when they have thousands of resumes of the best undergrads to sift through every month. We're going to see it from the companies on the fringe, who couldn't afford to hire even a junior developer. They're going to take a low-risk chance because the alternative is just not do the work at all. And they'll prove out the model and 20 years later the only people who understand the basics anymore will be more interested in management positions than writing yet another Django app, and 20 more years later they'll be retiring with nobody else coming in behind them.

LegitShady 4y ago
Thats the same issue with dall-e, stable diffusion, or any of these, and the ML world seems to think its a win and artists don't deserve to have jobs if they can't compete with or become users of those models. If you can't get paid to produce art as a journeyman that supports your basic needs you won't make it to being a master artist except in your free time, maybe, and you won't have the same work references for work on projects during your development. It will be somewhat like in the writing world, where many or most of the major writers are independently wealthy because nobody else can afford to take the time that writing requires off of real work that feeds and houses them. Imagine replacing all the engineers in training with ML and wondering why there are no engineers later. Thats where we're headed.
- a9h74j 4y ago
  Is "being on the slopes toward a singularity" locally distinguishable from "pulling up the ladders behind you"?
  - LegitShady 4y ago
    I don't think 'pulling up the ladders behind you' is an issue here at all. This isn't artists or writers pulling up the ladders here . The ML experts who are making these systems aren't professional writers or professional artists. Industry is always convinced by automation and lower costs, and boards who make these decisions are senior professional management not creatives. Neither group ever cared about the ladder behind them in other industries or their own companies. The question is one of what we want to accept as societal norms, or push for legislation of regulation. Personally I think the idea of banning such systems won't work, but all writing done by ChatGPT or other 'creative' work done by other ML models should be regulated such that it must be marked with a discloser that it is the product of a 'creative' machine learning model. Human authorship is an important distinction that needs to be clearly distinguished.

LegitShady 4y ago

Thats the same issue with dall-e, stable diffusion, or any of these, and the ML world seems to think its a win and artists don't deserve to have jobs if they can't compete with or become users of those models. If you can't get paid to produce art as a journeyman that supports your basic needs you won't make it to being a master artist except in your free time, maybe, and you won't have the same work references for work on projects during your development. It will be somewhat like in the writing world, where many or most of the major writers are independently wealthy because nobody else can afford to take the time that writing requires off of real work that feeds and houses them. Imagine replacing all the engineers in training with ML and wondering why there are no engineers later. Thats where we're headed.

a9h74j 4y ago
Is "being on the slopes toward a singularity" locally distinguishable from "pulling up the ladders behind you"?
- LegitShady 4y ago
  I don't think 'pulling up the ladders behind you' is an issue here at all. This isn't artists or writers pulling up the ladders here . The ML experts who are making these systems aren't professional writers or professional artists. Industry is always convinced by automation and lower costs, and boards who make these decisions are senior professional management not creatives. Neither group ever cared about the ladder behind them in other industries or their own companies. The question is one of what we want to accept as societal norms, or push for legislation of regulation. Personally I think the idea of banning such systems won't work, but all writing done by ChatGPT or other 'creative' work done by other ML models should be regulated such that it must be marked with a discloser that it is the product of a 'creative' machine learning model. Human authorship is an important distinction that needs to be clearly distinguished.