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Sam has always been pretty open about this. Everyone is so quick to argue that no machine could possible do their job. It’s cope. I’m close enough to top manag

Sam has always been pretty open about this. Everyone is so quick to argue that no machine could possible do their job. It’s cope. I’m close enough to top management to see how these decisions get made and I have seen 3 instances in the last month of a potential job opening not getting opened because “we could do most of that with chatGPT/mid journey today, and probably do all of it once gpt5 comes out” The jobs: illustrator, copywriter, operations analyst. All junior roles, all potential career starters that are not going to happen.

Jensson 4y ago
Every startup founder argues that their product will revolutionize the world. Nocode startup founders says all the time that soon programmers will be gone etc. One of those will be right, but you shouldn't listen to founders opinions about these, as they will be biased to believe in their own success.
krab 4y ago
Wouldn't they have a faster start, using new tools than the previous generation?
danpalmer 4y ago
Any time things like this have happened in the past, a huge number of jobs have been created, and the impact on existing jobs has been less than expected. Illustrators – midjourney isn't going to replace great illustrators, it's going to allow more companies to have more illustrations, replace some use of stock illustrations, and aid productivity for illustrators in helping them churn out ideas that can be turned into more specific/tailored illustrations. Copywriters – GPT/etc aren't going to replace copy editors, they're going to allow many more people who wouldn't otherwise hire a copy editor to have better copy, and to aid productivity for copywriters, allowing them to move into more of a supervising role. Operations analyst – I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but if it's business intelligence, there's nothing anywhere near ready yet. These tools don't provide insight, they provide on-demand content that a human can curate for real insight. In general, these tools will act as productivity aids for the people already in these professions, allowing the jobs to evolve over time. That's not just at the top end but also at the junior end. More people will be able to make use of generated content for free, but they'll all find that it takes time to do so effectively, and find that eventually roles need to be hired for. If you're currently deciding not to hire these roles because they can be done with GPT/etc already, then I think you're either not quite serious about hiring for these roles, don't understand what goes into them, or have needs that are only marginally above those fulfilled by stock photos/illustrations etc.
- cal85 4y ago
  > GPT/etc aren't going to replace copy editors, they're going to allow many more people who wouldn't otherwise hire a copy editor to have better copy But won't it also allow many people who would otherwise hire a copy editor not to hire one?
  - danpalmer 4y ago
    Somewhat, but I don't think it'll be a huge issue. - Increased accessibility of copy-editing will likely increase the market overall, and therefore increase the market for human copy-editors. - GPT/etc are good but don't have context, taste, and have proven to be quite fallible over multiple rounds of feedback (common in copywriting/illustration in particular), so offer a good starting point that needs human intervention to use. - Copy-editors aren't just a transactional prompt-in-copy-out service in human form, they hold products and brands in their head, understand customer segments and how copy applies to them, define strategy, and so on. They are proactive. Companies with these roles, already benefitting from these things, are unlikely to replace them with software (at least not effectively).
    - politician 4y ago
      If you eliminate the roles of juniors and enhance the productivity of seniors, then what happens when the seniors retire and die off? The number of roles for humans hits zero.
      - danpalmer 4y ago
        To be clear, I don't see these tools as being the equivalent of junior staff, I think they fulfil a different role. When I say "expert" I don't mean senior, I mean someone with domain skills. I think these tools will be usable by people of any skill level, and the result will be commensurate with the user's skill level. You'll still be able to hire junior illustrators, they'll use the tools, and they'll produce better results than if they didn't have the tools, but not as good as a senior person with the tools.
moi2388 4y ago
I’m afraid you will be proven wrong. I watched the microsoft365 copilot example, and the sheer amount of reports, excel files, presentations and word documents it can produce in seconds is horrific. You do realise you’re going to be expected to check the details in these reports, and your colleagues will all start sending hundreds of “very important” presentations that you must read?
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  Why would you need to read and check these reports? Wouldn't that be a job for AI?
  - PartiallyTyped 4y ago
    You can not prove the correctness of a generative model simply because the space of all inputs is intractable. At best you can define properties exhibited by responses within a region of the input space - which is still intractable in many ways - and as you go up in dimensionality, the harder this will be because most volume exists on the edges of the spa and not the centre. Maybe you can train a swath of other models to synthesize property tests, but then you need to bootstrap this onto itself.
    - weard_beard 4y ago
      New industry: AI insurance. When your 10-Q says, “further nazi butts expected” instead of, “stock dilution” you can get a payout.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    In which case why bother producing them at all? They're hardly an efficient way for computers to communicate.
danaris 4y ago
> Everyone is so quick to argue that no machine could possible do their job There's a big difference between "No machine could do my job" and "ChatGPT can't do my job." Most people are saying the latter. Most people are right about that. I fully believe that there will be some time in the future when we can create programs powerful enough to convert clear enough natural language of business requirements into code. There may even come a time when we can create fully sapient, sentient machine intelligences, smart enough to work alongside us, though that I'm a bit more skeptical about. That doesn't mean that what we have today can do this. I can believe that there are certain things that ChatGPT and its brethren can do well enough to streamline away a few jobs, but for many reasons, I don't think that will be widespread. What all of this does mean is that we need to be pushing for political and economic changes to ensure that, when and if the full (or at least much greater) automation does happen, the human beings whose jobs disappear will be taken care of. We need to stop the fruits of automation going entirely to the already-wealthy, and instead make it so people are no longer required to dedicate their lives to toil just to be allowed to survive on this planet.
Zigurd 4y ago
Even if this... "Everyone is so quick to argue that no machine could possible do their job. It’s cope." ...is not totally right today, it looks like LLMs can improve quickly, and that there are a lot of currently human tasks it will automate with just incremental improvements, if improvement is even needed.

Jensson 4y ago

Every startup founder argues that their product will revolutionize the world. Nocode startup founders says all the time that soon programmers will be gone etc. One of those will be right, but you shouldn't listen to founders opinions about these, as they will be biased to believe in their own success.

krab 4y ago

Wouldn't they have a faster start, using new tools than the previous generation?

danpalmer 4y ago

Any time things like this have happened in the past, a huge number of jobs have been created, and the impact on existing jobs has been less than expected. Illustrators – midjourney isn't going to replace great illustrators, it's going to allow more companies to have more illustrations, replace some use of stock illustrations, and aid productivity for illustrators in helping them churn out ideas that can be turned into more specific/tailored illustrations. Copywriters – GPT/etc aren't going to replace copy editors, they're going to allow many more people who wouldn't otherwise hire a copy editor to have better copy, and to aid productivity for copywriters, allowing them to move into more of a supervising role. Operations analyst – I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but if it's business intelligence, there's nothing anywhere near ready yet. These tools don't provide insight, they provide on-demand content that a human can curate for real insight. In general, these tools will act as productivity aids for the people already in these professions, allowing the jobs to evolve over time. That's not just at the top end but also at the junior end. More people will be able to make use of generated content for free, but they'll all find that it takes time to do so effectively, and find that eventually roles need to be hired for. If you're currently deciding not to hire these roles because they can be done with GPT/etc already, then I think you're either not quite serious about hiring for these roles, don't understand what goes into them, or have needs that are only marginally above those fulfilled by stock photos/illustrations etc.

cal85 4y ago
> GPT/etc aren't going to replace copy editors, they're going to allow many more people who wouldn't otherwise hire a copy editor to have better copy But won't it also allow many people who would otherwise hire a copy editor not to hire one?
- danpalmer 4y ago
  Somewhat, but I don't think it'll be a huge issue. - Increased accessibility of copy-editing will likely increase the market overall, and therefore increase the market for human copy-editors. - GPT/etc are good but don't have context, taste, and have proven to be quite fallible over multiple rounds of feedback (common in copywriting/illustration in particular), so offer a good starting point that needs human intervention to use. - Copy-editors aren't just a transactional prompt-in-copy-out service in human form, they hold products and brands in their head, understand customer segments and how copy applies to them, define strategy, and so on. They are proactive. Companies with these roles, already benefitting from these things, are unlikely to replace them with software (at least not effectively).
  - politician 4y ago
    If you eliminate the roles of juniors and enhance the productivity of seniors, then what happens when the seniors retire and die off? The number of roles for humans hits zero.
    - danpalmer 4y ago
      To be clear, I don't see these tools as being the equivalent of junior staff, I think they fulfil a different role. When I say "expert" I don't mean senior, I mean someone with domain skills. I think these tools will be usable by people of any skill level, and the result will be commensurate with the user's skill level. You'll still be able to hire junior illustrators, they'll use the tools, and they'll produce better results than if they didn't have the tools, but not as good as a senior person with the tools.

moi2388 4y ago

I’m afraid you will be proven wrong. I watched the microsoft365 copilot example, and the sheer amount of reports, excel files, presentations and word documents it can produce in seconds is horrific. You do realise you’re going to be expected to check the details in these reports, and your colleagues will all start sending hundreds of “very important” presentations that you must read?

hotpotamus 4y ago
Why would you need to read and check these reports? Wouldn't that be a job for AI?
- PartiallyTyped 4y ago
  You can not prove the correctness of a generative model simply because the space of all inputs is intractable. At best you can define properties exhibited by responses within a region of the input space - which is still intractable in many ways - and as you go up in dimensionality, the harder this will be because most volume exists on the edges of the spa and not the centre. Maybe you can train a swath of other models to synthesize property tests, but then you need to bootstrap this onto itself.
  - weard_beard 4y ago
    New industry: AI insurance. When your 10-Q says, “further nazi butts expected” instead of, “stock dilution” you can get a payout.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  In which case why bother producing them at all? They're hardly an efficient way for computers to communicate.

danaris 4y ago

> Everyone is so quick to argue that no machine could possible do their job There's a big difference between "No machine could do my job" and "ChatGPT can't do my job." Most people are saying the latter. Most people are right about that. I fully believe that there will be some time in the future when we can create programs powerful enough to convert clear enough natural language of business requirements into code. There may even come a time when we can create fully sapient, sentient machine intelligences, smart enough to work alongside us, though that I'm a bit more skeptical about. That doesn't mean that what we have today can do this. I can believe that there are certain things that ChatGPT and its brethren can do well enough to streamline away a few jobs, but for many reasons, I don't think that will be widespread. What all of this does mean is that we need to be pushing for political and economic changes to ensure that, when and if the full (or at least much greater) automation does happen, the human beings whose jobs disappear will be taken care of. We need to stop the fruits of automation going entirely to the already-wealthy, and instead make it so people are no longer required to dedicate their lives to toil just to be allowed to survive on this planet.

Zigurd 4y ago

Even if this... "Everyone is so quick to argue that no machine could possible do their job. It’s cope." ...is not totally right today, it looks like LLMs can improve quickly, and that there are a lot of currently human tasks it will automate with just incremental improvements, if improvement is even needed.