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US College students could take those jobs away at any time if they just wrote their own essays. I don't see the point of this article. Maybe the smart Kenyans

US College students could take those jobs away at any time if they just wrote their own essays. I don't see the point of this article. Maybe the smart Kenyans are themselves using ChatGPT to 5x their throughput and essay-writing business in the meantime.

crop_rotation 3y ago
Smart Kenyans doing this work most likely can not afford GPT Plus for GPT4, and the free version doesn't work during peak hours.
- ElevenLathe 3y ago
  Luckily they're in Kenya, which is UTC+3, so their business hours presumably don't coincide with NA/EU West peak hours.
  - carlmr 3y ago
    It's just 2h off Germany. There's at least a good overlap in peak demand with EU I'd assume.
  - nequo 3y ago
    EU West is UTC+2.
- coding123 3y ago
  I haven't had the free version poop out on me for more than 15 minutes.
- plugin-baby 3y ago
  At 20$/month, someone earning 1000$/month would have no trouble affording it.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I'm seeing a lot of conflicting estimates on Google for Kenyan average income, and nothing at all about the distribution. Does anyone know what fraction of Kenyans have incomes of at least 1000 USD/month?
    - kennlebu 3y ago
      I am a Kenyan living in Kenya, and I can confidently estimate that it's less than 2% of the entire population
    - snackwalrus 3y ago
      For starters, one of the ones mentioned in the article…
- gus_massa 3y ago
  If they can't afford it, it means that they are charging less than GPT4 and they can compeat in price.
  - crop_rotation 3y ago
    Charging less than GPT4 doesn't make sense. GPT4 is 20 USD per month and too many prompts. It is much harder for a human to be skilled enough to write good essays and survive at 20 USD a month. Competing with GPT4 on price for boilerplate essay is just pointless.
    - RecycledEle 3y ago
      I am not an expert in this unethical market, but I think competition for essays to plagiarize would be on a per-essay basis. The competition would be between a $20 per month OpenAI membership and paying a Kenyan by the essay. The Kenyan could use OpenAI for drafts and charge $5 per essay. (S)he would earn more than $20 per month.
plagiarist 3y ago
It is interesting as a marker of how far the technology has come. Writing essays that are coherent enough to be submitted as coursework, for arbitrary topics or subjects, is something we would have thought an AI would have difficulty with years ago.
- sam0x17 3y ago
  To a certain extent I think it also exposes how much busy-work there really is out there. A lot of people have been talking about ChatGPT as the ultimate bullshit artist, well if that is true, the stuff it is producing perfectly would be what, bullshit in the first place?
  - UnpossibleJim 3y ago
    It can't be too much of a surprise that a lot of white collar jobs involve a fair amount of BS. I have 3 to 4 meetings a day and only 1 or 2 are really necessary =[
  - cherrycherry98 3y ago
    Essays produced for school aren't of much value for someone else to read. The value is to the writer who gets to practice synthesizing ideas and communicating them into words. There's still value to be had in learning how to communicate effectively in writing.
    - carlmr 3y ago
      I underestimated the power of writing myself when I was in high school. I always preferred math, physics, programming, and chemistry, to the vague, almost arbitrary nature of writing good essays. As I've gotten older I've noticed how my day job depends more on communicating effectively than solving hard technical problems. The best technical idea doesn't serve you if you can't communicate it to others.
  - thfuran 3y ago
    Is having kids learn to read and write bullshit because text to speech and speech recognition software exist? The point of school work isn't the output, it's learning.
elicash 3y ago
> I don't see the point of this article. You can draw whatever conclusions you want, the "point" is mostly to make you aware of new facts, though perspectives are also quoted in the piece -- including yours! Specifically, one quoted person talks about both pros and cons and says: "This means they can now spend more time being creative, and have better articles because of the time ChatGPT saves them."
burkaman 3y ago
I think this article is interesting because it's real-world evidence of an impact GPT is having. I've seen speculation from people about how education might change, but this makes it much more real. GPT is providing work that students used to get from real professional writers.
dj_mc_merlin 3y ago
> if they just wrote their own essays. Which some significant part of the college student body is not willing to. Having the option to do something without the will to do so is practically equivalent to not being able to. The kind of people who would look for someone to write their essays is also very likely to opt for the lowest friction method, and chatGPT is obviously that. The article mentions that low word count easier answers are where he primarily felt a hit, and chatGPT would be good at those.
- Mezzie 3y ago
  > The kind of people who would look for someone to write their essays is also very likely to opt for the lowest friction method, and chatGPT is obviously that. This is and isn't true. I made a living doing high-skill essay writing for a while - I specialized in upper-level undergraduate or graduate level papers with a 24-48 hour turn around time. I charged out the nose. For the American students, you're right. For the foreign students at US universities (the majority of my clients), they had a ton of money to throw around, a lack of understanding of how the systems worked, and strong status incentives to get a degree by any means necessary. Most of them were also privileged enough to never have to learn planning and therefore left things to the last moment, which is where I came in. I'd expect LLMs to contribute to the bifurcation of the cheating market with domestic students making use of them but rich foreign students not so much. (I did this because if I made too much I'd lose my healthcare and since I have a condition where my meds cost 300k+/yr + makes 40+ hour weeks difficult, the 'logical' thing to do was work the grey market since I could have healthcare and work the 20-30 hours/week that was comfortable for me. Now that I have healthcare that isn't in danger of being taken away if I'm too successful, I no longer engage in this.)
  - tyoma 3y ago
    I once lived next to a woman who did this as her side hustle. She once did pretty much all of a master’s degree for a wealthy middle eastern student, but her clients included plenty of US-raised students as well. This is far from a US-only thing though; degrees serve as gatekeepers to status and positions worldwide, so there is a market that will be filled. As an example, my grandfather did similar work as a side job — in the USSR. The real qualification for many director level posts was “on good terms with the right people in the party”… but the formal qualifications required some related degree to the (factory, institute, etc.) function. If you could not get the degree yourself, you found someone to help. I would not at all be surprised if the situation is identical in modern China.
MattGaiser 3y ago
You used to pay someone to do your laundry. Then the washing machine came along.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  And now you can pay someone to use a bigger washing machine to do your laundry along with that of others. Everybody wins!
dangerwill 3y ago
> Maybe the smart Kenyans are themselves using ChatGPT to 5x their throughput and essay-writing business in the meantime. Why in the world do you think a lazy US college student would go to the effort to arrange an international money transfer to get an essay written by ChatGPT and edited by someone, when they can just get it from ChatGPT directly and cut out the middle man? It's not like ChatGPT is obscure or unknown at this point. This is just a Steven Pinker-esque attempt to sound clever while handwaving away hardship and not realizing what you are saying is utter nonsense.

crop_rotation 3y ago

Smart Kenyans doing this work most likely can not afford GPT Plus for GPT4, and the free version doesn't work during peak hours.

ElevenLathe 3y ago
Luckily they're in Kenya, which is UTC+3, so their business hours presumably don't coincide with NA/EU West peak hours.
- carlmr 3y ago
  It's just 2h off Germany. There's at least a good overlap in peak demand with EU I'd assume.
- nequo 3y ago
  EU West is UTC+2.
coding123 3y ago
I haven't had the free version poop out on me for more than 15 minutes.
plugin-baby 3y ago
At 20$/month, someone earning 1000$/month would have no trouble affording it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_w 3y ago
  I'm seeing a lot of conflicting estimates on Google for Kenyan average income, and nothing at all about the distribution. Does anyone know what fraction of Kenyans have incomes of at least 1000 USD/month?
  - kennlebu 3y ago
    I am a Kenyan living in Kenya, and I can confidently estimate that it's less than 2% of the entire population
  - snackwalrus 3y ago
    For starters, one of the ones mentioned in the article…
gus_massa 3y ago
If they can't afford it, it means that they are charging less than GPT4 and they can compeat in price.
- crop_rotation 3y ago
  Charging less than GPT4 doesn't make sense. GPT4 is 20 USD per month and too many prompts. It is much harder for a human to be skilled enough to write good essays and survive at 20 USD a month. Competing with GPT4 on price for boilerplate essay is just pointless.
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    I am not an expert in this unethical market, but I think competition for essays to plagiarize would be on a per-essay basis. The competition would be between a $20 per month OpenAI membership and paying a Kenyan by the essay. The Kenyan could use OpenAI for drafts and charge $5 per essay. (S)he would earn more than $20 per month.

plagiarist 3y ago

It is interesting as a marker of how far the technology has come. Writing essays that are coherent enough to be submitted as coursework, for arbitrary topics or subjects, is something we would have thought an AI would have difficulty with years ago.

sam0x17 3y ago
To a certain extent I think it also exposes how much busy-work there really is out there. A lot of people have been talking about ChatGPT as the ultimate bullshit artist, well if that is true, the stuff it is producing perfectly would be what, bullshit in the first place?
- UnpossibleJim 3y ago
  It can't be too much of a surprise that a lot of white collar jobs involve a fair amount of BS. I have 3 to 4 meetings a day and only 1 or 2 are really necessary =[
- cherrycherry98 3y ago
  Essays produced for school aren't of much value for someone else to read. The value is to the writer who gets to practice synthesizing ideas and communicating them into words. There's still value to be had in learning how to communicate effectively in writing.
  - carlmr 3y ago
    I underestimated the power of writing myself when I was in high school. I always preferred math, physics, programming, and chemistry, to the vague, almost arbitrary nature of writing good essays. As I've gotten older I've noticed how my day job depends more on communicating effectively than solving hard technical problems. The best technical idea doesn't serve you if you can't communicate it to others.
- thfuran 3y ago
  Is having kids learn to read and write bullshit because text to speech and speech recognition software exist? The point of school work isn't the output, it's learning.

elicash 3y ago

> I don't see the point of this article. You can draw whatever conclusions you want, the "point" is mostly to make you aware of new facts, though perspectives are also quoted in the piece -- including yours! Specifically, one quoted person talks about both pros and cons and says: "This means they can now spend more time being creative, and have better articles because of the time ChatGPT saves them."

burkaman 3y ago

I think this article is interesting because it's real-world evidence of an impact GPT is having. I've seen speculation from people about how education might change, but this makes it much more real. GPT is providing work that students used to get from real professional writers.

dj_mc_merlin 3y ago

> if they just wrote their own essays. Which some significant part of the college student body is not willing to. Having the option to do something without the will to do so is practically equivalent to not being able to. The kind of people who would look for someone to write their essays is also very likely to opt for the lowest friction method, and chatGPT is obviously that. The article mentions that low word count easier answers are where he primarily felt a hit, and chatGPT would be good at those.

Mezzie 3y ago
> The kind of people who would look for someone to write their essays is also very likely to opt for the lowest friction method, and chatGPT is obviously that. This is and isn't true. I made a living doing high-skill essay writing for a while - I specialized in upper-level undergraduate or graduate level papers with a 24-48 hour turn around time. I charged out the nose. For the American students, you're right. For the foreign students at US universities (the majority of my clients), they had a ton of money to throw around, a lack of understanding of how the systems worked, and strong status incentives to get a degree by any means necessary. Most of them were also privileged enough to never have to learn planning and therefore left things to the last moment, which is where I came in. I'd expect LLMs to contribute to the bifurcation of the cheating market with domestic students making use of them but rich foreign students not so much. (I did this because if I made too much I'd lose my healthcare and since I have a condition where my meds cost 300k+/yr + makes 40+ hour weeks difficult, the 'logical' thing to do was work the grey market since I could have healthcare and work the 20-30 hours/week that was comfortable for me. Now that I have healthcare that isn't in danger of being taken away if I'm too successful, I no longer engage in this.)
- tyoma 3y ago
  I once lived next to a woman who did this as her side hustle. She once did pretty much all of a master’s degree for a wealthy middle eastern student, but her clients included plenty of US-raised students as well. This is far from a US-only thing though; degrees serve as gatekeepers to status and positions worldwide, so there is a market that will be filled. As an example, my grandfather did similar work as a side job — in the USSR. The real qualification for many director level posts was “on good terms with the right people in the party”… but the formal qualifications required some related degree to the (factory, institute, etc.) function. If you could not get the degree yourself, you found someone to help. I would not at all be surprised if the situation is identical in modern China.

MattGaiser 3y ago

You used to pay someone to do your laundry. Then the washing machine came along.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
And now you can pay someone to use a bigger washing machine to do your laundry along with that of others. Everybody wins!

dangerwill 3y ago

> Maybe the smart Kenyans are themselves using ChatGPT to 5x their throughput and essay-writing business in the meantime. Why in the world do you think a lazy US college student would go to the effort to arrange an international money transfer to get an essay written by ChatGPT and edited by someone, when they can just get it from ChatGPT directly and cut out the middle man? It's not like ChatGPT is obscure or unknown at this point. This is just a Steven Pinker-esque attempt to sound clever while handwaving away hardship and not realizing what you are saying is utter nonsense.