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If programmers can be replaced by AI, so can every other white collar job and humanity will look very different than what it is now. And I’ve been using ChatGPT

If programmers can be replaced by AI, so can every other white collar job and humanity will look very different than what it is now. And I’ve been using ChatGPT and copilot and it’s a nice tool but nowhere near a replacement for knowing how to program.

pjmlp 4y ago
Right now it is a kindergarten child at cognitive level, and like humans it will grow up and evolve, unless we nuke ourselves before it happens.
- avereveard 4y ago
  right now it will only solve problem someone else already knows the solution to, so not even at that. that said, I expect an ai assisted clerk to be order magnitude faster than not. it will be though for people at the bottom of the learning curve for a bit, but in half generation the educational offering will include how to work toghether with ai, massively improving worker productivity that is not to say it won't have negative impact. there's so much job that we need, currently programmer are in high demand, and it's the one of the highest paying jobs, but that will change, possibly dramatically. I expect people at the top of the chain to be in trouble first (architects and whatnot) because they are the least creative and the one that possibly require the most knowledge, things ai do exceptionally well as of today.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Having helped companies in traditional line of business to "streamline" their work processes, I am quite clear that many of the stuff that the West outsources into Asian countries will eventually be outsourced to AI. It is already so that in many industries there are hardly any traditional coder jobs on site, and having to explain every step to avoid it going off rails in offshoring assignments is hardly going to be any different to explain it to an AI, when it gets good enough. Maybe by GPT-20 only, but it will come, and then the roles of architects and business analists are the only ones left.
    - Yoric 4y ago
      > Maybe by GPT-20 only, but it will come, and then the roles of architects and business analists are the only ones left. Agreed. Although... we actually don't know which jobs will be the ones left. For all we know, it will have taken over business analysis, too. Plus, from my experience working on architecture, I suspect that automatizing that part of my job won't be too hard. For all we know, the only jobs left will be nurse and deep sea miner.
    - execveat 4y ago
      There's no reason this couldn't happen, but surely it would require something better than LLM.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- danparsonson 4y ago
  It's a word association machine, it's not even at kindergarten level when it comes to general cognition.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Regardless, it is foolish to belive it won't improve and take over tasks that in 2023 it still isn't able to do. Who would guess, beyond Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that I can use my phone in 2023 to translate anything on a foreign restaurant in real time.
    - danparsonson 4y ago
      It will of course continue to improve at what it does but I personally think it's unrealistic to assume it will somehow spontaneously develop generalised cognitive ability; there are surely limits to how far this particular approach will take us.
- raincole 4y ago
  It's not kindergarten child at congitive level. It's a different kind of cognition than humans, if you can call it "cognition" at all.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    Regardless, it is foolish to belive it won't improve.
    - Ygg2 4y ago
      It's foolish to believe it will improve indefinitely or reach human parity. Wasn't AI driving just few years away for 5 years?
  - _-____-_ 4y ago
    The lesson I've taken from ChatGPT so far is that "consciousness" may be much less interesting or "special" than we thought. It may turn out that it's nothing more than an emergent property of a shared language that models the world around us and gives us capacity to plan and communicate our actions.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- sneak 4y ago
  It has no cognition. Do not personify the algorithm that cannot think.
  - pjmlp 4y ago
    It doesn't need to think per se, just like robots at an Assembly line, or algorithms at HFT, it only needs to do a good enough job.
- jstx1 4y ago
  Children don't have the same level of general knowledge in kindergarten. Adults don't have it either, not even the best adults.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
This person is asking about career prospects 10-15 years out though. I'm sorry, but the landscape in then might be as alien to someone asking today, as todays would have been to someone asking 15 years ago (2008). What John said is correct, but personally I think he's underplaying how much people could be affected. Those "product skills" take years of grinding to really sharpen, and in 15 years only a few people might actually be needed to apply them
- csande17 4y ago
  Was the tech landscape much different 10-15 years ago? This is a genuine question; the iPhone App Store was really the last "big thing" to happen to the industry in my mind, and it came out in 2008.
  - raincole 4y ago
    No much different. If you were an intern Java programmer 10 years ago, it's totally possible that you're still a senior Java programmer today.
- pharmakom 4y ago
  2008 wasn’t so different was it? I guess the big new thing in work since then is the “gig economy”.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    We've had LLMs for about 5 years so far in non-academic research. If we're talking 10 years out that means we're looking at tech that's about 1/3 through its development to date. Take any mature-ish technology that you use today and compare the version 1/3 through its life to the version you use now. Look at Chrome 20 compare to Chrome 111, or React 14 compared to React 18, or an iPhone 4 compared to an iPhone 14, or a car from 1950 compared to a car today... The difference is always quite significant. Superficially they're still the same thing, but if you look at the detail everything is just better. AI will be the same.
krisoft 4y ago
> If programmers can be replaced by AI, so can every other white collar job If programmers can be replaced by AI, so can it replace even the blue collar jobs. Because if it can’t that is what this developer here will be working on.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  I'm pretty sure the reason human physical labour hasn't been replaced yet in many areas isn't because AI tech hasn't advanced sufficiently - there are real engineering challenges in automating physical interactions with the real world that it's hard to see how ever more advanced LLMs will help much with (though they could certainly assist in the design process). That humans are still needed to cook/assemble burgers or peel veggies is in some ways more surprising than the code and language generation capabilities of ChatGPT.
  - coffeebeqn 4y ago
    They’re held back by robotics and energy storage more than anything. How would chatgpt paint my wall or fix my sink or install electrical wiring in my house?
    - wizofaus 4y ago
      It's worth wondering though how long it will before ChatGPT could give you complete instructions for building a machine/robot capable of doing any of those things...or better still, building a factory that can churn out millions of such machines...
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > physical labour hasn't been replaced yet in many areas isn't because AI tech hasn't advanced sufficiently I’m a robotics engineer. There are two options. AI can either replace all jobs or it can’t. If it can then we are all out of a job, and then the next project is how to organise society such that everyone can live a good and fulfilling life in harmony. If it can’t, for whatever reason, then that is the next thing I will be personally working on. Simple as that. Because of this I don’t see how would it be possible to run out of programing jobs before running out of all the other jobs first. You are talking about ChatGPT, and LLMs, but what i am saying transcends particular technologies.

pjmlp 4y ago

Right now it is a kindergarten child at cognitive level, and like humans it will grow up and evolve, unless we nuke ourselves before it happens.

avereveard 4y ago
right now it will only solve problem someone else already knows the solution to, so not even at that. that said, I expect an ai assisted clerk to be order magnitude faster than not. it will be though for people at the bottom of the learning curve for a bit, but in half generation the educational offering will include how to work toghether with ai, massively improving worker productivity that is not to say it won't have negative impact. there's so much job that we need, currently programmer are in high demand, and it's the one of the highest paying jobs, but that will change, possibly dramatically. I expect people at the top of the chain to be in trouble first (architects and whatnot) because they are the least creative and the one that possibly require the most knowledge, things ai do exceptionally well as of today.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Having helped companies in traditional line of business to "streamline" their work processes, I am quite clear that many of the stuff that the West outsources into Asian countries will eventually be outsourced to AI. It is already so that in many industries there are hardly any traditional coder jobs on site, and having to explain every step to avoid it going off rails in offshoring assignments is hardly going to be any different to explain it to an AI, when it gets good enough. Maybe by GPT-20 only, but it will come, and then the roles of architects and business analists are the only ones left.
  - Yoric 4y ago
    > Maybe by GPT-20 only, but it will come, and then the roles of architects and business analists are the only ones left. Agreed. Although... we actually don't know which jobs will be the ones left. For all we know, it will have taken over business analysis, too. Plus, from my experience working on architecture, I suspect that automatizing that part of my job won't be too hard. For all we know, the only jobs left will be nurse and deep sea miner.
  - execveat 4y ago
    There's no reason this couldn't happen, but surely it would require something better than LLM.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
danparsonson 4y ago
It's a word association machine, it's not even at kindergarten level when it comes to general cognition.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Regardless, it is foolish to belive it won't improve and take over tasks that in 2023 it still isn't able to do. Who would guess, beyond Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that I can use my phone in 2023 to translate anything on a foreign restaurant in real time.
  - danparsonson 4y ago
    It will of course continue to improve at what it does but I personally think it's unrealistic to assume it will somehow spontaneously develop generalised cognitive ability; there are surely limits to how far this particular approach will take us.
raincole 4y ago
It's not kindergarten child at congitive level. It's a different kind of cognition than humans, if you can call it "cognition" at all.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Regardless, it is foolish to belive it won't improve.
  - Ygg2 4y ago
    It's foolish to believe it will improve indefinitely or reach human parity. Wasn't AI driving just few years away for 5 years?
- _-____-_ 4y ago
  The lesson I've taken from ChatGPT so far is that "consciousness" may be much less interesting or "special" than we thought. It may turn out that it's nothing more than an emergent property of a shared language that models the world around us and gives us capacity to plan and communicate our actions.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
sneak 4y ago
It has no cognition. Do not personify the algorithm that cannot think.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  It doesn't need to think per se, just like robots at an Assembly line, or algorithms at HFT, it only needs to do a good enough job.
jstx1 4y ago
Children don't have the same level of general knowledge in kindergarten. Adults don't have it either, not even the best adults.

pcthrowaway 4y ago

This person is asking about career prospects 10-15 years out though. I'm sorry, but the landscape in then might be as alien to someone asking today, as todays would have been to someone asking 15 years ago (2008). What John said is correct, but personally I think he's underplaying how much people could be affected. Those "product skills" take years of grinding to really sharpen, and in 15 years only a few people might actually be needed to apply them

csande17 4y ago
Was the tech landscape much different 10-15 years ago? This is a genuine question; the iPhone App Store was really the last "big thing" to happen to the industry in my mind, and it came out in 2008.
- raincole 4y ago
  No much different. If you were an intern Java programmer 10 years ago, it's totally possible that you're still a senior Java programmer today.
pharmakom 4y ago
2008 wasn’t so different was it? I guess the big new thing in work since then is the “gig economy”.
- onion2k 4y ago
  We've had LLMs for about 5 years so far in non-academic research. If we're talking 10 years out that means we're looking at tech that's about 1/3 through its development to date. Take any mature-ish technology that you use today and compare the version 1/3 through its life to the version you use now. Look at Chrome 20 compare to Chrome 111, or React 14 compared to React 18, or an iPhone 4 compared to an iPhone 14, or a car from 1950 compared to a car today... The difference is always quite significant. Superficially they're still the same thing, but if you look at the detail everything is just better. AI will be the same.

krisoft 4y ago

> If programmers can be replaced by AI, so can every other white collar job If programmers can be replaced by AI, so can it replace even the blue collar jobs. Because if it can’t that is what this developer here will be working on.

wizofaus 4y ago
I'm pretty sure the reason human physical labour hasn't been replaced yet in many areas isn't because AI tech hasn't advanced sufficiently - there are real engineering challenges in automating physical interactions with the real world that it's hard to see how ever more advanced LLMs will help much with (though they could certainly assist in the design process). That humans are still needed to cook/assemble burgers or peel veggies is in some ways more surprising than the code and language generation capabilities of ChatGPT.
- coffeebeqn 4y ago
  They’re held back by robotics and energy storage more than anything. How would chatgpt paint my wall or fix my sink or install electrical wiring in my house?
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    It's worth wondering though how long it will before ChatGPT could give you complete instructions for building a machine/robot capable of doing any of those things...or better still, building a factory that can churn out millions of such machines...
- krisoft 4y ago
  > physical labour hasn't been replaced yet in many areas isn't because AI tech hasn't advanced sufficiently I’m a robotics engineer. There are two options. AI can either replace all jobs or it can’t. If it can then we are all out of a job, and then the next project is how to organise society such that everyone can live a good and fulfilling life in harmony. If it can’t, for whatever reason, then that is the next thing I will be personally working on. Simple as that. Because of this I don’t see how would it be possible to run out of programing jobs before running out of all the other jobs first. You are talking about ChatGPT, and LLMs, but what i am saying transcends particular technologies.