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I would like to see timeline predictions in articles like these. I agree completely that GPT can do 10-100% of most jobs I know about, but at the same time Pyth

I would like to see timeline predictions in articles like these. I agree completely that GPT can do 10-100% of most jobs I know about, but at the same time Python and UpWork have been around for a while too and I still know people who spend weeks manually reading through PDF files to extract the URLs, or copy-pasting the same line from hundreds of documents into a spreadsheet, etc. Sometimes people under-estimate how 'unagile' most business is. Are we talking months, years, or decades before we see this "new class of dispossessed white-collar workers, who risk suffering a similar fate to that of manufacturing workers in the 1980s."

tonyaiken 4y ago
It’s much easier to learn prompt than Python
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  Let’s see about this :)
- ben_w 4y ago
  On one hand: yes. On the other hand: in order to be able to use current LLMs effectively, you have to understand their output well enough to debug it, even if you are using the LLM to write the fix to its own bug. I’ve done something along the lines of “write me a python script which converts midi files into this JSON format I’m giving you as an example: …” — a few runtime crashes it was able to fix just from pasting in the command line output, but fixing “all pitches and durations are zero” required me to get my hands dirty and decompose the problem into a chunk small enough for chatGPT to fix. I don’t know how far we are from any AI, LLM or otherwise, not needing or benefiting from human oversight, except in the specific domains like chess where it has already happened. I don’t believe in saying “never” to stuff like this, as that’s a common error with many technologies from flight to superconductors not just AI, but I also notice my personal guesses err on the side of being too near in our future.
eggsmediumrare 4y ago
My intuition is that job quality (and compensation) will be reduced before we notice a significant reduction in job quantity.
anthk 4y ago
Those can be done not from just from Python but from poppler-tools and grep too.

tonyaiken 4y ago

It’s much easier to learn prompt than Python

ChatGTP 4y ago
Let’s see about this :)
ben_w 4y ago
On one hand: yes. On the other hand: in order to be able to use current LLMs effectively, you have to understand their output well enough to debug it, even if you are using the LLM to write the fix to its own bug. I’ve done something along the lines of “write me a python script which converts midi files into this JSON format I’m giving you as an example: …” — a few runtime crashes it was able to fix just from pasting in the command line output, but fixing “all pitches and durations are zero” required me to get my hands dirty and decompose the problem into a chunk small enough for chatGPT to fix. I don’t know how far we are from any AI, LLM or otherwise, not needing or benefiting from human oversight, except in the specific domains like chess where it has already happened. I don’t believe in saying “never” to stuff like this, as that’s a common error with many technologies from flight to superconductors not just AI, but I also notice my personal guesses err on the side of being too near in our future.

eggsmediumrare 4y ago

My intuition is that job quality (and compensation) will be reduced before we notice a significant reduction in job quantity.

anthk 4y ago

Those can be done not from just from Python but from poppler-tools and grep too.