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It's not just ok it's great. an enormous amount of progress in civilization is due to down skilling. Technology allows someone with 4 hrs of training to accompl

It's not just ok it's great. an enormous amount of progress in civilization is due to down skilling. Technology allows someone with 4 hrs of training to accomplish what it took a master with 20 years in close to the same time.

User23 4y ago
> Technology allows someone with 4 hrs of training to accomplish what it took a master with 20 years in close to the same time. Is this rhetorical hyperbole or do you have a real example of an endeavor where a four hour novice is now the equal of a 20 year master thanks to technology?
- JamesBarney 4y ago
  Assembly line work replacing artisans and craftsman. The skills required to build a desk 300 years ago are very different than the skill inputs. Many construction jobs have seen a replacement of carpenters and masons with lower skilled workers due to pre-fabrication. Fast food workers replacing chefs and cooks. Taxi drivers being replaced with Uber drivers.
  - User23 4y ago
    I don’t see the fry cook at McDonalds as doing the same thing as Julia Child. Uber drivers are on average considerably less familiar with their cities than taxi drivers, at least in cities like London that still have meaningful standards. Likewise hauling a double-wide to a plot isn’t the same activity as building a house. It appears to me that your argument either fails or is rhetorical hyperbole when comparing like for like. For example, I have no doubt that a cabinet maker today using advanced power tools could make a cabinet of at least equal quality as a master using hand tools in considerably less time and even with a lower skill level. But that power tool using cabinet maker still wouldn’t be remotely close to a four hour novice.
    - graderjs 4y ago
      Yeah, but a power tool is not exactly the same at ChatGPT (in this instance it's your metaphors that are out of whack! :)). You could jump on an assembly line and do it tho. You're just not seeing the whole metaphor here!
rvz 4y ago
> Technology allows someone with 4 hrs of training to accomplish what it took a master with 20 years in close to the same time. I see, so that must mean that one can become a fully qualified lawyer, medical doctor, surgeon or a financial advisor in just 4 hours by using AI's like ChatGPT? Wow! /s Sounds just like the infinite 'Learn X in 24 hours' scam courses. But this time with the AI snake oil label.
- graderjs 4y ago
  Well, consider it. I can: 1 - Pay my 20-year-experience lawyer 1000 USD an hour to draft me a customized EULA that respect GDPR, works in UK and US, and contains specific provisions about no-no use-cases, IP of content created and what happens when you don't pay your license fees. Lawyer takes 4 hours to produce mediocre output that will require another 8 hours to revise (because he's smart like that), and I pay him 10K and call it a day. or; 2 - Consult with ChatGPT (Law version ~~ coming soon!) to draft the same. I have zero legal training but will probably be done in 4 hours. I pay my fancy-arse lawyer 1K to review the contract (that I lie I have left over from a previous product~~before I knew him of course!), he spends 20 minutes glancing at it, while picking his toe-nails, then bills the rest to his paralegal who spends 30 minutes checking layouts and margins in Word, and I get swindled for 10 minutes) and I'm done. If you are saying you couldn't do that with ChatGPT (law version~~coming soon!) then I'd say in fact it is _you_ sir who is out of touch with reality, and clearly have not used ChatGPT in any serious capacity whatsoever. Good day to you sir!
  - rvz 4y ago
    > If you are saying you couldn't do that with ChatGPT (law version~~coming soon!) then I'd say in fact it is _you_ sir who is out of touch with reality, and clearly have not used ChatGPT in any serious capacity whatsoever. Good day to you sir! The fact that either way a human lawyer is still getting involved in reviewing the output already tells me that not even you can fully trust ChatGPT or any other so-called AI to not hallucinate its answers. Also it is highly likely would output drafts that may be potentially legally unsafe and when it does, it can't explain its own output transparently which that is my point. This hype of LLMs clearly hasn't aged well with the reality of people being unable to trust the output or use it for anything serious other than for a sophistry generator.
CatWChainsaw 4y ago
Sounds like Idiocracy and The Machine Stops had a lovechild.
- graderjs 4y ago
  Yeah, outsourcing if people become stupid...but why's everyone afraid of that? You don't get dumber by using better tools, you get to operate at a higher level. I don't understand it or know how to describe it right now but there's a distinction between: machine knows how, human is dumb terminal, and machine knows how, human know other how. And the whole thing is not a binary dichotomy between: machine knows how / human is dumb terminal versus machine is dumb terminal human knows how. I think this error that you have is mostly some error of thinking...but to be forgiven as the specifics are not clear!
  - CatWChainsaw 4y ago
    Did you not read The Machine Stops? Engineers created a system that worked so perfectly it fixed itself, and people lived in "perfect luxury", if sitting in a room alone your whole life counts. And then errors inevitably piled up, and enough time had passed that nobody knew how to maintain their precious Machine. Everybody died. Pretty easy moral of the story. Yet this is exactly what we are trying to build today. The Machine.
    - graderjs 4y ago
      Nah I haven't read it. . . Should I ? Sounds like you think I should. But I did read the summary on Wikipedia...or something. Seems like that tells me all I need to know, pretty simple premise. But that's not the thing I'm struggling with.... What I'm struggling with particularly these days because I'm so into the chatGPT -- I'm using it every day for work. I'm learning a lot from it. And maybe just cause I'm busy but I don't have the time but I really want to be able to articulate how like ChatGPT is useful and it's helping me, and yet also it's not a panacea and I can see how maybe you know it leads to like a lack of skill or something somehow negative--but for me I've been learning from it and that's a positive and good thing. And I don't think you can just dismiss that because that's real. But yeah I'm struggling with how to express this distinction right now I just haven't had the time to really clarify my thoughts maybe I'll come back and do it later... or maybe you have more to say. Also to your point: are we really trying to build this tho? And if we are (I mean that's terrible)-- what are you doing about that? Are you going to save us all? I'm kind of serious because I mean that's an existential threat right?--so if you realize that you should be doing something. edit: Hey BTW -- I think you should check out "When the Machine Starts" song by Missy Higgins. Hearing you talk about that book I"m sure it has to be a reference! It's good anyway, I really like her.

User23 4y ago

> Technology allows someone with 4 hrs of training to accomplish what it took a master with 20 years in close to the same time. Is this rhetorical hyperbole or do you have a real example of an endeavor where a four hour novice is now the equal of a 20 year master thanks to technology?

JamesBarney 4y ago
Assembly line work replacing artisans and craftsman. The skills required to build a desk 300 years ago are very different than the skill inputs. Many construction jobs have seen a replacement of carpenters and masons with lower skilled workers due to pre-fabrication. Fast food workers replacing chefs and cooks. Taxi drivers being replaced with Uber drivers.
- User23 4y ago
  I don’t see the fry cook at McDonalds as doing the same thing as Julia Child. Uber drivers are on average considerably less familiar with their cities than taxi drivers, at least in cities like London that still have meaningful standards. Likewise hauling a double-wide to a plot isn’t the same activity as building a house. It appears to me that your argument either fails or is rhetorical hyperbole when comparing like for like. For example, I have no doubt that a cabinet maker today using advanced power tools could make a cabinet of at least equal quality as a master using hand tools in considerably less time and even with a lower skill level. But that power tool using cabinet maker still wouldn’t be remotely close to a four hour novice.
  - graderjs 4y ago
    Yeah, but a power tool is not exactly the same at ChatGPT (in this instance it's your metaphors that are out of whack! :)). You could jump on an assembly line and do it tho. You're just not seeing the whole metaphor here!

rvz 4y ago

> Technology allows someone with 4 hrs of training to accomplish what it took a master with 20 years in close to the same time. I see, so that must mean that one can become a fully qualified lawyer, medical doctor, surgeon or a financial advisor in just 4 hours by using AI's like ChatGPT? Wow! /s Sounds just like the infinite 'Learn X in 24 hours' scam courses. But this time with the AI snake oil label.

graderjs 4y ago
Well, consider it. I can: 1 - Pay my 20-year-experience lawyer 1000 USD an hour to draft me a customized EULA that respect GDPR, works in UK and US, and contains specific provisions about no-no use-cases, IP of content created and what happens when you don't pay your license fees. Lawyer takes 4 hours to produce mediocre output that will require another 8 hours to revise (because he's smart like that), and I pay him 10K and call it a day. or; 2 - Consult with ChatGPT (Law version ~~ coming soon!) to draft the same. I have zero legal training but will probably be done in 4 hours. I pay my fancy-arse lawyer 1K to review the contract (that I lie I have left over from a previous product~~before I knew him of course!), he spends 20 minutes glancing at it, while picking his toe-nails, then bills the rest to his paralegal who spends 30 minutes checking layouts and margins in Word, and I get swindled for 10 minutes) and I'm done. If you are saying you couldn't do that with ChatGPT (law version~~coming soon!) then I'd say in fact it is _you_ sir who is out of touch with reality, and clearly have not used ChatGPT in any serious capacity whatsoever. Good day to you sir!
- rvz 4y ago
  > If you are saying you couldn't do that with ChatGPT (law version~~coming soon!) then I'd say in fact it is _you_ sir who is out of touch with reality, and clearly have not used ChatGPT in any serious capacity whatsoever. Good day to you sir! The fact that either way a human lawyer is still getting involved in reviewing the output already tells me that not even you can fully trust ChatGPT or any other so-called AI to not hallucinate its answers. Also it is highly likely would output drafts that may be potentially legally unsafe and when it does, it can't explain its own output transparently which that is my point. This hype of LLMs clearly hasn't aged well with the reality of people being unable to trust the output or use it for anything serious other than for a sophistry generator.

CatWChainsaw 4y ago

Sounds like Idiocracy and The Machine Stops had a lovechild.

graderjs 4y ago
Yeah, outsourcing if people become stupid...but why's everyone afraid of that? You don't get dumber by using better tools, you get to operate at a higher level. I don't understand it or know how to describe it right now but there's a distinction between: machine knows how, human is dumb terminal, and machine knows how, human know other how. And the whole thing is not a binary dichotomy between: machine knows how / human is dumb terminal versus machine is dumb terminal human knows how. I think this error that you have is mostly some error of thinking...but to be forgiven as the specifics are not clear!
- CatWChainsaw 4y ago
  Did you not read The Machine Stops? Engineers created a system that worked so perfectly it fixed itself, and people lived in "perfect luxury", if sitting in a room alone your whole life counts. And then errors inevitably piled up, and enough time had passed that nobody knew how to maintain their precious Machine. Everybody died. Pretty easy moral of the story. Yet this is exactly what we are trying to build today. The Machine.
  - graderjs 4y ago
    Nah I haven't read it. . . Should I ? Sounds like you think I should. But I did read the summary on Wikipedia...or something. Seems like that tells me all I need to know, pretty simple premise. But that's not the thing I'm struggling with.... What I'm struggling with particularly these days because I'm so into the chatGPT -- I'm using it every day for work. I'm learning a lot from it. And maybe just cause I'm busy but I don't have the time but I really want to be able to articulate how like ChatGPT is useful and it's helping me, and yet also it's not a panacea and I can see how maybe you know it leads to like a lack of skill or something somehow negative--but for me I've been learning from it and that's a positive and good thing. And I don't think you can just dismiss that because that's real. But yeah I'm struggling with how to express this distinction right now I just haven't had the time to really clarify my thoughts maybe I'll come back and do it later... or maybe you have more to say. Also to your point: are we really trying to build this tho? And if we are (I mean that's terrible)-- what are you doing about that? Are you going to save us all? I'm kind of serious because I mean that's an existential threat right?--so if you realize that you should be doing something. edit: Hey BTW -- I think you should check out "When the Machine Starts" song by Missy Higgins. Hearing you talk about that book I"m sure it has to be a reference! It's good anyway, I really like her.