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1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that

1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. Though some people in some companies might be laid off, it doesn't necessarily mean that more people will be laid off than new jobs are created. 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. You don't know that an AI's answer is always right. Even if it's perfect in 99% of cases, the answer could be jaw-droppingly destructive in that 1% of cases and make errors that even the dumbest human wouldn't make. Being grossly wrong even a small percentage of the time is far worse than a human making minor errors sometimes, and being slow all of the time. 3) Go and look at some of those historical picture sites to see images of an accounting department in some companies throughout 1900s America. Before computers, you'd see a fascinating image of a gigantic floor of an office building with desks filled with typewriters and calculators and tons of workers just adding things up and trying to store records in a bunch of file cabinets. Desktop Computers and spreadsheets were invented and all of a sudden an accountant could quickly update a few values in a spreadsheet and figure out an answer to a question far faster and more reliably than that entire floor of accountants. Did accounting software make the world worse and destroy jobs even though it made 1 accountant ridiculously more productive than they were in the past?

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argiopetech 4y ago
Came here to write this. To expand #2 in a potentially obvious way, the HIL can't be any random person. In most cases, the subtle, destructive errors you're trying to avoid are only going to be caught by a SME with significant experience working without the benefit of three automated assistant. Much in line with #3, I see GPT as a (IMHO, welcome) return to the days of a secretarial pool. You couldn't rely on a pool secretary to be conduct your business without oversight (because they had many Jr. Executives utilizing their services and weren't deeply engaged in your day-to-day like a dedicated Sr Executive Assistant might be), but they were experts in typing, drafting, and professional correspondence generally. GPT promises more, as it can express some level of subject matter expertise in almost every topic, but I believe that, for the foreseeable future, it will be best utilizable as a productivity enhancing assistant rather than as a full replacement for those with the expertise needed to check its results. Edit: On the flip side, companies that still have secretarial pools (though I'm only aware of such pools still existing in government agencies, which won't be replaced due to need for secrecy) will probably end up firing a lot of secretaries.
pixl97 4y ago
As for your point 2), we already have humans in the loop of other humans and this commonly leads to the "why do companies have so many people in them" trope we see posted on HN commonly. I think in that sense you may be underestimating how incredibly stupid people can be too. This said, AI doesn't remove all humans from the loop, but may significantly reduce how many are in said loop.
- cowsandmilk 4y ago
  As someone who has worked at companies buying the databases that come from manually reading papers, the quality of them is hugely variable due to this. Lots of manual errors, missing context, etc. Plenty of drug activity databases don’t distinguish between assays in solution, cell-based, and in vivo. When these produce hugely different values for inhibition due to metabolism and transport in biological environments. GPT4 opens the possibilities for the true experts to focus on prompt engineering to extract these details, developing mechanisms to test performance, think deeply on how the data is stored and organized, etc.
pavel_lishin 4y ago
> that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. This has been the promise over and over again, for centuries, and it has consistently not paid off. Where's the predicted society where automation allows us all to work for two hours a day, and spend the rest at leisure? > Though some people in some companies might be laid off, it doesn't necessarily mean that more people will be laid off than new jobs are created. It doesn't mean the opposite, either. > 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. You don't know that an AI's answer is always right. Even if it's perfect in 99% of cases, the answer could be jaw-droppingly destructive in that 1% of cases and make errors that even the dumbest human wouldn't make. Being grossly wrong even a small percentage of the time is far worse than a human making minor errors sometimes, and being slow all of the time. Companies have shown time and time again that they're willing to make this trade-off.
- transcoderx 4y ago
  How much do you think you would have had to pay for an iPhone 200 years ago? Are you sure society hasn't benefitted from productivity increases?
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  - chii 4y ago
    People who claim that modern industrial tech and advancements have not benefited society is arguing that they are not being disproportionately benefited. Industrial automation did create the 2hr weeks - only that it's the people who paid capital and and invested in their creation that got those 2hr weeks. But everybody else got the benefit as the general access and availability of many more goods and services than otherwise would've been possible.
    - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
      >many more goods and services than otherwise would've been possible Why is More stuff =/= a better life not blatantly obvious at this point Having an iPhone doesn't make your life better
inimino 4y ago
Your comment is amazing in its naivete. The first sentence in the post you are replying to already includes awareness of everything you said and more, while nothing in your comment suggests you understood the post at all. Priya doesn't become 10 times more productive, someone else uses the tool to do her job, which no longer exists.
- eloff 4y ago
  That cycle has gone on since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Jobs are destroyed, people complain and protest, new jobs are created and the total economic pie and the absolute size of the average person’s slice increases. A valid question is are there inventions for which this would not be true? I think yes for general AI, but also yes for people who are unable to migrate between a job lost and any of the new jobs created due to lack of education or willingness to reinvent themselves or relocate to where the new jobs are. Innovation can definitely create winners and losers. That’s bad for the losers, but not necessarily for society as a whole. Unless so many losers are created that they rise up and overthrow the system. That’s a real long tail risk if the pace of change sufficiently outpaces our ability to adapt to it.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    Disruptions in the past have almost always been good for society overall, but there have also always been significant localized negative effects. For example, a farrier may have been thrown out of work and had to switch to unskilled labor, but their sons and daughters were better off. The issue is that as change comes faster and faster, a higher proportion of people fall into the "disrupted" category.
    - eloff 4y ago
      I agree, I said as much about winners and losers being created. It’s still a good thing for society - the alternative is halting or slowing progress.
      - 4y ago
yucky 4y ago
> companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services How exactly is that a good thing? We already consume too much, now we will have 10x as much to consume? Unlikely that demand for "the things" goes up 10x, which means the value will drop.
- justinclift 4y ago
  > Unlikely that demand for "the things" goes up 10x, which means the value will drop. And/or advertisers will get even shadier, competing even harder for the elusive dollar.
- fl0id 4y ago
  Also, it matters what you consume. I e a lot of work is only necessary to support other workers or ‚bs work‘ like selling ppl things they don’t really need.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  It's not even that for me. I'm rapidly losing faith in "a company can provide good products/services". Maybe it's just because I hyperfocus on the software sector, where this seems especially true, but it seems like worse products (those that prey on and value extract from the user) make more money. Companies seem incentivized to produce worse products, while preying on our worst impulses. Convenience you become a slave to, not owning anything, streaming everything. Why make this game good when we can simply make it addictive? (Shout out to Diablo Immoral.) Why make it healthy when people just want it to be tasty? Why not remove these features and charge you to get them back? Why not spy on and datamine our users? They won't care enough to stop us. Why not plan obsolescence in our products? Every competitor will be forced to follow suit or make less money and be eliminated. These measures truly make more money, and companies are actively incentivized to pursue them. It really feels like the "Late Stage Capitalism" memes I've normally mentally discarded. Or the "money is the root of all evil" meme from the Bible. It truly is, it seems like. When I read "companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services", my mind now turns that into "companies can potentially value extract from you with chintzy spyware 10 times as much as they do now!"... and I think, "Wait, the person phrased that as a good thing." I feel like I've arrived at a pretty bleak existential outlook. :D There IS hope, though: government regulation! Special mention to the EU and California and Massachusetts, which empower the people's will with privacy and right-to-repair laws that hold all this in check. I guess if I mask an idyllic application of that onto "companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services", I can sort of feel good about that premise again.
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
>that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives Except this isn't what happens Assuming that you make a product that people actually want, the company will direct almost all of the proceeds to enrich shareholders and executives (You know, "fIdUcIaRy dUtY") The products may be good for a few years but eventually get worse and become either wasteful (if they weren't already wasteful) or actively spyware So no, I don't expect anything positive for most humans to come out of corporate control of AI that allows you to eliminate human jobs. In what regime of capitalism is a shareholder incentivized to retain expensive employees over equally or more effective machines? History tells is there is no regime that would support that over any time period because the human is now just a "cost" or "wasteful" to the profit margin of the company.
jiggywiggy 4y ago
Yeah it will create jobs. And maybe make certain companies more productive. As many are quick to point history has shown new jobs appear. But it often take years or decades and causes a lot of individual stress and social unrest. Hopefully it will be smooth for many people. But I don't think it will take long before chatgpt allows a team of 2 what now a team of 5 developers does. We might be in for some stress the coming years.
- ImHereToVote 4y ago
  What job will appear that a machine can't do better. Plumber comes to mind. It isn't inconceivable however that Boston robotics couldn't hack that if they could connect one of their robots to a general problem solver that takes visual input.
  - jiggywiggy 4y ago
    Everything human related, more services as therapy, yoga, massage coaching etc.
    - ImHereToVote 4y ago
      But will you be able to afford this fancy artisanal therapy, yoga, massage coaching? There will be a general intelligence providing this via dirt cheap robots eventually.
pbhjpbhj 4y ago
>that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. See, that worked through the 20th Century because we, in the West, had effectively unlimited materials and unlimited energy - we just had people dig it out of the ground, easy. But now we realise that fossil fuels wouldn't last forever, both because of environmental impact and it just plain running out. Any plan for the future that requires us to produce more in order to get out of a crisis is 100 years too late. We need to distribute the benefit of the efficiencies, not think we can produce 10 times as much junk because we made things more efficient. But Capitalists thrive when we create more waste, strip more non-renewables, make more pollution. Re 2) built in sanity checks aren't too hard; yes we'll keep humans in the loop for high-cost and life critical systems for a few more years.
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croes 4y ago
>that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. More capacity doesn't mean more ideas and even if you just made it easier for copy cats and every product will face more competition.
MisterTea 4y ago
> 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. Also ignores companies not wanting to pay employees. These AI verifiers will be low paid people, akin to the off-shored social media content checkers who have to sift through digital garbage.
nirvdrum 4y ago
> 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. You don't know that an AI's answer is always right. Even if it's perfect in 99% of cases, the answer could be jaw-droppingly destructive in that 1% of cases and make errors that even the dumbest human wouldn't make. Being grossly wrong even a small percentage of the time is far worse than a human making minor errors sometimes, and being slow all of the time. I very much doubt this will be the case and if it were, it's unlikely to be effective. We know people that have to check something that's right 99% of the time but wrong 1% zone out and overlook issues. It's a big part of why self-driving cars can't be a 99% affair and why people die when self-driving cars make bad decisions even though a driver is behind the wheel. I think where profit can be extracted, companies will rely on good ol' lock-in or hope the cost of changing is too high to warrant a mass exodus from their platform. Everyone has a super computer in their pocket, but instead of improving typing we started adding "Sent from iPhone" as a way to excuse us from having to proofread anything. I can't count how many times I've gotten mass emails with template variables that weren't interpolated. Or emails that reference discussions that never happened. Ostensibly, a human was there to review all of this, but shirked that responsibility because ultimately they can let it waste someone else's time. I see AI turbo-charging that. I think we're being disingenuous with all of these automated tools and thinking an attentive, caring human will check all that work. It'll be more profitable, whether in terms of a company's capital or an individual's time, to clean our hands and go "whelp, that's AI for ya" when things go wrong.
- t43562 4y ago
  not after a few lawsuits.
phpisthebest 4y ago
> that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. There are some real problems here. For example can the economy even support 10X production? Ag -> Industrial -> Information transitions were all supported by a mix of massive expansion in population, mass migration of populations, and globalization of economies information -> automation transition does not seem to have these 3 things in the same way. Globalism is slowing or reversing into protectionism. Migration is still high but seemingly for different reasons (geopolitical) as people displaced for war, crime, or climate and critical for this discussion population growth as SLOWED way down, and it expected to reserve about 2040. This means people looking at the historical models for how these tech disruptions played in are very flawed in their "everything will be just fine" handwavium My prediction is we will see a MASSIVE increase in weath gaps, and extreme decrease in standard of living in most of the industrial world (we are already seeing this in a limited way) leading to more and more political instability
michael_nielsen 4y ago
Your comment is amazing in its lack of empathy. Everything you write can be true, and this can still be disastrous for some individual, whose life may be badly damaged.
- Julesman 4y ago
  This. Empathy. People acting like they sound smart when they talk like a USC sophomore who equates logic with truth. As if the human condition were an actuary table. As if triage was a guiding principle of human culture. This kind of thinking slips easily into fascism. Ayn Rand writ large. Such a lack of nuance. We can pragmatically recognize that pandora's box has been opened and also, at the same time, have an ounce of empathy. We can even like where things are going, understand the negative impact on some, AND still have empathy. What I see here is emotional immaturity and the arrogance of someone who never learned the value of maturity. Lazy thinking. Self-serving modes of thought that allow you to feel ok with selfishness. Unchecked capitalist ideology. The psychology of greed. It's sad.
  - calf 4y ago
    Well their user name is Logical Monster, so.
29athrowaway 4y ago
If you are using Transformers to do that kind of work you should go to jail for fraud.
nashashmi 4y ago
Yeah but the new graduates are not equipped to enhance their work with AI (independently). The new graduates have already graduated through a curriculum based on self analysis and thought. AI will test their skills and make them obsolete. They are most at risk of structural unemployment. The advent of the Internet did the same for those who graduated right before 2000. These graduates did not have skills needed to work with the Internet. And often found themselves going back to school to learn a new trade.
mschuster91 4y ago
> 1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. Though some people in some companies might be laid off, it doesn't necessarily mean that more people will be laid off than new jobs are created. "Trickle down economics" don't work. Industrialization waves wrecked the lives of many many millions of people over the centuries, while the people owning the factories eventually got richer than aristocracy as they kept the price of the sold goods barely cheap enough to be a bit cheaper than manual production and pocketed the immense difference in production cost. > 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. You don't know that an AI's answer is always right. Even if it's perfect in 99% of cases, the answer could be jaw-droppingly destructive in that 1% of cases and make errors that even the dumbest human wouldn't make. Replace "an AI's work" by "a C-level executive". They can run a company fine in 99% of cases and in 1% of cases run it completely aground with extremely dumb short-sighted decisions (like we're seeing with Twitter, or with Boeing, or Credit Suisse), but no one cares about that and the execs still get their golden parachute. It will be just the same with AI - eventual failure will be priced in. > Did accounting software make the world worse and destroy jobs even though it made 1 accountant ridiculously more productive than they were in the past? The switch towards computerization wrecked the Western middle classes. It used to be the case that white collar jobs could feed a whole family comfortably on one income, and automation made it so bad that the majority of our populations has to struggle to make ends meet now, and completely forget about having children because we can't afford large enough homes.
- jmull 4y ago
  > Trickle down economics" don't work. Industrialization waves wrecked the lives of many many millions of people over the centuries, while the people owning the factories eventually got richer than aristocracy as they kept the price of the sold goods barely cheap enough to be a bit cheaper than manual production and pocketed the immense difference in production cost. (1) trickle-down economics-style policies aren’t the only way to harness the (presumed) increased productivity of LLMs like chatgpt. (2) I don’t see how you can argue that standards of living have decreased since the start of the industrial revolution and subsequent technological developments. Certainly, the question of how to distribute the benefits of wide-spread LLM use is very important, since it could be done well or could be done terribly. But there’s no reason to just assume terrible is the only option.
n0tahacker 4y ago
> 1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If that's true, he'll really have problems in a GPT-4 world. Seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
quijoteuniv 4y ago
I appreciate the perspective shared in the article, but I can't help but find it somewhat egocentric. Firstly, it seems to overlook the fact that Priya was already being exploited in a low-paying job. The article describes the long hours and overwork she endures, but it fails to challenge the status quo of her employment situation. This lack of critical analysis may be indicative of a narrow focus on the negative effects of GPT-4. Secondly, it appears that the author is using Priya's story as a way to gain self-importance in his blog, painting her as a victim of ChatGPT's progress. While it's essential to address the potential job displacement caused by AI advancements, using an individual's plight as a narrative tool seems rather opportunistic. A more balanced discussion of the broader implications of AI on society and the workforce would have been more informative and less self-centered.
- eminence32 4y ago
  I think I have a similar feeling to you. Why is it that only the blog author gets to use GPT4 to do Priya's work? Why doesn't Priya also get to use GPT4 to accelerate/enhance her work?
- japhyr 4y ago
  I would guess that a higher proportion of HNers have had a chance to work with GPT-4 than the general population has. Most people are still basing their takes about AI either on something like GPT-3, or just what they're hearing in the general media. The point of the article I that there are a lot more people in jobs like Priya's who won't be able to quickly leverage AI for their own benefit than there are who will. We throw the word "disruptive" around a lot here. But that's exactly what these new AI tools will do to many people's lives. Their lives will be disrupted, and they have little cushion to fall back on. I believe technical progress is inevitable, but a lot of people suffer on the path forward.
everdrive 4y ago
> If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. It’s baffling to imagine that this would be the outcome of widespread use of AI. Ultimately this may be a philosophical question. To what degree do companies enrich the lives of people, vs. just sell then trash they don’t need? Particularly when it comes to the sorts of things that AI can produce: advertising copy, content, which will surely mean “engagement.” Ie, addictive trash.
kyletns 4y ago
This is such a toxic response. You're commenting on someone's blog about how they are sad. Your response is to argue that they're wrong which means that their sadness is invalid.
generic92034 4y ago
So, what are the chances that it is different, this time? If AIs are getting better and better, they might replace more and more jobs. What kind of new jobs are we imagining that cannot be replaced by a "near-intelligent" AI? If that comes to pass, the only issue for the owning class I see is that they might not have customers in sufficient numbers, that are able to pay.

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argiopetech 4y ago

Came here to write this. To expand #2 in a potentially obvious way, the HIL can't be any random person. In most cases, the subtle, destructive errors you're trying to avoid are only going to be caught by a SME with significant experience working without the benefit of three automated assistant. Much in line with #3, I see GPT as a (IMHO, welcome) return to the days of a secretarial pool. You couldn't rely on a pool secretary to be conduct your business without oversight (because they had many Jr. Executives utilizing their services and weren't deeply engaged in your day-to-day like a dedicated Sr Executive Assistant might be), but they were experts in typing, drafting, and professional correspondence generally. GPT promises more, as it can express some level of subject matter expertise in almost every topic, but I believe that, for the foreseeable future, it will be best utilizable as a productivity enhancing assistant rather than as a full replacement for those with the expertise needed to check its results. Edit: On the flip side, companies that still have secretarial pools (though I'm only aware of such pools still existing in government agencies, which won't be replaced due to need for secrecy) will probably end up firing a lot of secretaries.

pixl97 4y ago

As for your point 2), we already have humans in the loop of other humans and this commonly leads to the "why do companies have so many people in them" trope we see posted on HN commonly. I think in that sense you may be underestimating how incredibly stupid people can be too. This said, AI doesn't remove all humans from the loop, but may significantly reduce how many are in said loop.

cowsandmilk 4y ago
As someone who has worked at companies buying the databases that come from manually reading papers, the quality of them is hugely variable due to this. Lots of manual errors, missing context, etc. Plenty of drug activity databases don’t distinguish between assays in solution, cell-based, and in vivo. When these produce hugely different values for inhibition due to metabolism and transport in biological environments. GPT4 opens the possibilities for the true experts to focus on prompt engineering to extract these details, developing mechanisms to test performance, think deeply on how the data is stored and organized, etc.

pavel_lishin 4y ago

> that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. This has been the promise over and over again, for centuries, and it has consistently not paid off. Where's the predicted society where automation allows us all to work for two hours a day, and spend the rest at leisure? > Though some people in some companies might be laid off, it doesn't necessarily mean that more people will be laid off than new jobs are created. It doesn't mean the opposite, either. > 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. You don't know that an AI's answer is always right. Even if it's perfect in 99% of cases, the answer could be jaw-droppingly destructive in that 1% of cases and make errors that even the dumbest human wouldn't make. Being grossly wrong even a small percentage of the time is far worse than a human making minor errors sometimes, and being slow all of the time. Companies have shown time and time again that they're willing to make this trade-off.

transcoderx 4y ago
How much do you think you would have had to pay for an iPhone 200 years ago? Are you sure society hasn't benefitted from productivity increases?
- deleted 4y ago
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- chii 4y ago
  People who claim that modern industrial tech and advancements have not benefited society is arguing that they are not being disproportionately benefited. Industrial automation did create the 2hr weeks - only that it's the people who paid capital and and invested in their creation that got those 2hr weeks. But everybody else got the benefit as the general access and availability of many more goods and services than otherwise would've been possible.
  - AndrewKemendo 4y ago
    >many more goods and services than otherwise would've been possible Why is More stuff =/= a better life not blatantly obvious at this point Having an iPhone doesn't make your life better

inimino 4y ago

Your comment is amazing in its naivete. The first sentence in the post you are replying to already includes awareness of everything you said and more, while nothing in your comment suggests you understood the post at all. Priya doesn't become 10 times more productive, someone else uses the tool to do her job, which no longer exists.

eloff 4y ago
That cycle has gone on since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Jobs are destroyed, people complain and protest, new jobs are created and the total economic pie and the absolute size of the average person’s slice increases. A valid question is are there inventions for which this would not be true? I think yes for general AI, but also yes for people who are unable to migrate between a job lost and any of the new jobs created due to lack of education or willingness to reinvent themselves or relocate to where the new jobs are. Innovation can definitely create winners and losers. That’s bad for the losers, but not necessarily for society as a whole. Unless so many losers are created that they rise up and overthrow the system. That’s a real long tail risk if the pace of change sufficiently outpaces our ability to adapt to it.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Disruptions in the past have almost always been good for society overall, but there have also always been significant localized negative effects. For example, a farrier may have been thrown out of work and had to switch to unskilled labor, but their sons and daughters were better off. The issue is that as change comes faster and faster, a higher proportion of people fall into the "disrupted" category.
  - eloff 4y ago
    I agree, I said as much about winners and losers being created. It’s still a good thing for society - the alternative is halting or slowing progress.
    - 4y ago

yucky 4y ago

> companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services How exactly is that a good thing? We already consume too much, now we will have 10x as much to consume? Unlikely that demand for "the things" goes up 10x, which means the value will drop.

justinclift 4y ago
> Unlikely that demand for "the things" goes up 10x, which means the value will drop. And/or advertisers will get even shadier, competing even harder for the elusive dollar.
fl0id 4y ago
Also, it matters what you consume. I e a lot of work is only necessary to support other workers or ‚bs work‘ like selling ppl things they don’t really need.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
It's not even that for me. I'm rapidly losing faith in "a company can provide good products/services". Maybe it's just because I hyperfocus on the software sector, where this seems especially true, but it seems like worse products (those that prey on and value extract from the user) make more money. Companies seem incentivized to produce worse products, while preying on our worst impulses. Convenience you become a slave to, not owning anything, streaming everything. Why make this game good when we can simply make it addictive? (Shout out to Diablo Immoral.) Why make it healthy when people just want it to be tasty? Why not remove these features and charge you to get them back? Why not spy on and datamine our users? They won't care enough to stop us. Why not plan obsolescence in our products? Every competitor will be forced to follow suit or make less money and be eliminated. These measures truly make more money, and companies are actively incentivized to pursue them. It really feels like the "Late Stage Capitalism" memes I've normally mentally discarded. Or the "money is the root of all evil" meme from the Bible. It truly is, it seems like. When I read "companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services", my mind now turns that into "companies can potentially value extract from you with chintzy spyware 10 times as much as they do now!"... and I think, "Wait, the person phrased that as a good thing." I feel like I've arrived at a pretty bleak existential outlook. :D There IS hope, though: government regulation! Special mention to the EU and California and Massachusetts, which empower the people's will with privacy and right-to-repair laws that hold all this in check. I guess if I mask an idyllic application of that onto "companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services", I can sort of feel good about that premise again.

AndrewKemendo 4y ago

>that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives Except this isn't what happens Assuming that you make a product that people actually want, the company will direct almost all of the proceeds to enrich shareholders and executives (You know, "fIdUcIaRy dUtY") The products may be good for a few years but eventually get worse and become either wasteful (if they weren't already wasteful) or actively spyware So no, I don't expect anything positive for most humans to come out of corporate control of AI that allows you to eliminate human jobs. In what regime of capitalism is a shareholder incentivized to retain expensive employees over equally or more effective machines? History tells is there is no regime that would support that over any time period because the human is now just a "cost" or "wasteful" to the profit margin of the company.

jiggywiggy 4y ago

Yeah it will create jobs. And maybe make certain companies more productive. As many are quick to point history has shown new jobs appear. But it often take years or decades and causes a lot of individual stress and social unrest. Hopefully it will be smooth for many people. But I don't think it will take long before chatgpt allows a team of 2 what now a team of 5 developers does. We might be in for some stress the coming years.

ImHereToVote 4y ago
What job will appear that a machine can't do better. Plumber comes to mind. It isn't inconceivable however that Boston robotics couldn't hack that if they could connect one of their robots to a general problem solver that takes visual input.
- jiggywiggy 4y ago
  Everything human related, more services as therapy, yoga, massage coaching etc.
  - ImHereToVote 4y ago
    But will you be able to afford this fancy artisanal therapy, yoga, massage coaching? There will be a general intelligence providing this via dirt cheap robots eventually.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago

>that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. See, that worked through the 20th Century because we, in the West, had effectively unlimited materials and unlimited energy - we just had people dig it out of the ground, easy. But now we realise that fossil fuels wouldn't last forever, both because of environmental impact and it just plain running out. Any plan for the future that requires us to produce more in order to get out of a crisis is 100 years too late. We need to distribute the benefit of the efficiencies, not think we can produce 10 times as much junk because we made things more efficient. But Capitalists thrive when we create more waste, strip more non-renewables, make more pollution. Re 2) built in sanity checks aren't too hard; yes we'll keep humans in the loop for high-cost and life critical systems for a few more years.

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croes 4y ago

>that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. More capacity doesn't mean more ideas and even if you just made it easier for copy cats and every product will face more competition.

MisterTea 4y ago

> 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. Also ignores companies not wanting to pay employees. These AI verifiers will be low paid people, akin to the off-shored social media content checkers who have to sift through digital garbage.

nirvdrum 4y ago

> 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. You don't know that an AI's answer is always right. Even if it's perfect in 99% of cases, the answer could be jaw-droppingly destructive in that 1% of cases and make errors that even the dumbest human wouldn't make. Being grossly wrong even a small percentage of the time is far worse than a human making minor errors sometimes, and being slow all of the time. I very much doubt this will be the case and if it were, it's unlikely to be effective. We know people that have to check something that's right 99% of the time but wrong 1% zone out and overlook issues. It's a big part of why self-driving cars can't be a 99% affair and why people die when self-driving cars make bad decisions even though a driver is behind the wheel. I think where profit can be extracted, companies will rely on good ol' lock-in or hope the cost of changing is too high to warrant a mass exodus from their platform. Everyone has a super computer in their pocket, but instead of improving typing we started adding "Sent from iPhone" as a way to excuse us from having to proofread anything. I can't count how many times I've gotten mass emails with template variables that weren't interpolated. Or emails that reference discussions that never happened. Ostensibly, a human was there to review all of this, but shirked that responsibility because ultimately they can let it waste someone else's time. I see AI turbo-charging that. I think we're being disingenuous with all of these automated tools and thinking an attentive, caring human will check all that work. It'll be more profitable, whether in terms of a company's capital or an individual's time, to clean our hands and go "whelp, that's AI for ya" when things go wrong.

t43562 4y ago
not after a few lawsuits.

phpisthebest 4y ago

> that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. There are some real problems here. For example can the economy even support 10X production? Ag -> Industrial -> Information transitions were all supported by a mix of massive expansion in population, mass migration of populations, and globalization of economies information -> automation transition does not seem to have these 3 things in the same way. Globalism is slowing or reversing into protectionism. Migration is still high but seemingly for different reasons (geopolitical) as people displaced for war, crime, or climate and critical for this discussion population growth as SLOWED way down, and it expected to reserve about 2040. This means people looking at the historical models for how these tech disruptions played in are very flawed in their "everything will be just fine" handwavium My prediction is we will see a MASSIVE increase in weath gaps, and extreme decrease in standard of living in most of the industrial world (we are already seeing this in a limited way) leading to more and more political instability

michael_nielsen 4y ago

Your comment is amazing in its lack of empathy. Everything you write can be true, and this can still be disastrous for some individual, whose life may be badly damaged.

Julesman 4y ago
This. Empathy. People acting like they sound smart when they talk like a USC sophomore who equates logic with truth. As if the human condition were an actuary table. As if triage was a guiding principle of human culture. This kind of thinking slips easily into fascism. Ayn Rand writ large. Such a lack of nuance. We can pragmatically recognize that pandora's box has been opened and also, at the same time, have an ounce of empathy. We can even like where things are going, understand the negative impact on some, AND still have empathy. What I see here is emotional immaturity and the arrogance of someone who never learned the value of maturity. Lazy thinking. Self-serving modes of thought that allow you to feel ok with selfishness. Unchecked capitalist ideology. The psychology of greed. It's sad.
- calf 4y ago
  Well their user name is Logical Monster, so.

29athrowaway 4y ago

If you are using Transformers to do that kind of work you should go to jail for fraud.

nashashmi 4y ago

Yeah but the new graduates are not equipped to enhance their work with AI (independently). The new graduates have already graduated through a curriculum based on self analysis and thought. AI will test their skills and make them obsolete. They are most at risk of structural unemployment. The advent of the Internet did the same for those who graduated right before 2000. These graduates did not have skills needed to work with the Internet. And often found themselves going back to school to learn a new trade.

mschuster91 4y ago

> 1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. Though some people in some companies might be laid off, it doesn't necessarily mean that more people will be laid off than new jobs are created. "Trickle down economics" don't work. Industrialization waves wrecked the lives of many many millions of people over the centuries, while the people owning the factories eventually got richer than aristocracy as they kept the price of the sold goods barely cheap enough to be a bit cheaper than manual production and pocketed the immense difference in production cost. > 2) Chaudry ignores that you need a human in the loop to check an AI's work. You don't know that an AI's answer is always right. Even if it's perfect in 99% of cases, the answer could be jaw-droppingly destructive in that 1% of cases and make errors that even the dumbest human wouldn't make. Replace "an AI's work" by "a C-level executive". They can run a company fine in 99% of cases and in 1% of cases run it completely aground with extremely dumb short-sighted decisions (like we're seeing with Twitter, or with Boeing, or Credit Suisse), but no one cares about that and the execs still get their golden parachute. It will be just the same with AI - eventual failure will be priced in. > Did accounting software make the world worse and destroy jobs even though it made 1 accountant ridiculously more productive than they were in the past? The switch towards computerization wrecked the Western middle classes. It used to be the case that white collar jobs could feed a whole family comfortably on one income, and automation made it so bad that the majority of our populations has to struggle to make ends meet now, and completely forget about having children because we can't afford large enough homes.

jmull 4y ago
> Trickle down economics" don't work. Industrialization waves wrecked the lives of many many millions of people over the centuries, while the people owning the factories eventually got richer than aristocracy as they kept the price of the sold goods barely cheap enough to be a bit cheaper than manual production and pocketed the immense difference in production cost. (1) trickle-down economics-style policies aren’t the only way to harness the (presumed) increased productivity of LLMs like chatgpt. (2) I don’t see how you can argue that standards of living have decreased since the start of the industrial revolution and subsequent technological developments. Certainly, the question of how to distribute the benefits of wide-spread LLM use is very important, since it could be done well or could be done terribly. But there’s no reason to just assume terrible is the only option.

n0tahacker 4y ago

> 1) Chaudry's article is amazing in its lack of creative thinking. If that's true, he'll really have problems in a GPT-4 world. Seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

quijoteuniv 4y ago

I appreciate the perspective shared in the article, but I can't help but find it somewhat egocentric. Firstly, it seems to overlook the fact that Priya was already being exploited in a low-paying job. The article describes the long hours and overwork she endures, but it fails to challenge the status quo of her employment situation. This lack of critical analysis may be indicative of a narrow focus on the negative effects of GPT-4. Secondly, it appears that the author is using Priya's story as a way to gain self-importance in his blog, painting her as a victim of ChatGPT's progress. While it's essential to address the potential job displacement caused by AI advancements, using an individual's plight as a narrative tool seems rather opportunistic. A more balanced discussion of the broader implications of AI on society and the workforce would have been more informative and less self-centered.

eminence32 4y ago
I think I have a similar feeling to you. Why is it that only the blog author gets to use GPT4 to do Priya's work? Why doesn't Priya also get to use GPT4 to accelerate/enhance her work?
japhyr 4y ago
I would guess that a higher proportion of HNers have had a chance to work with GPT-4 than the general population has. Most people are still basing their takes about AI either on something like GPT-3, or just what they're hearing in the general media. The point of the article I that there are a lot more people in jobs like Priya's who won't be able to quickly leverage AI for their own benefit than there are who will. We throw the word "disruptive" around a lot here. But that's exactly what these new AI tools will do to many people's lives. Their lives will be disrupted, and they have little cushion to fall back on. I believe technical progress is inevitable, but a lot of people suffer on the path forward.

everdrive 4y ago

> If people like Priya can be ~10 times more productive wielding some AI tools, that means that many companies can potentially produce 10 times as many products/services and make more things that will enrich peoples' lives. It’s baffling to imagine that this would be the outcome of widespread use of AI. Ultimately this may be a philosophical question. To what degree do companies enrich the lives of people, vs. just sell then trash they don’t need? Particularly when it comes to the sorts of things that AI can produce: advertising copy, content, which will surely mean “engagement.” Ie, addictive trash.

kyletns 4y ago

This is such a toxic response. You're commenting on someone's blog about how they are sad. Your response is to argue that they're wrong which means that their sadness is invalid.

generic92034 4y ago

So, what are the chances that it is different, this time? If AIs are getting better and better, they might replace more and more jobs. What kind of new jobs are we imagining that cannot be replaced by a "near-intelligent" AI? If that comes to pass, the only issue for the owning class I see is that they might not have customers in sufficient numbers, that are able to pay.