5 ms·

It's been interesting to me how advancement changes outmoded disciplines. The automobile didn't get rid of people riding horses, but it changed why people rode

by madrox 3y ago

It's been interesting to me how advancement changes outmoded disciplines. The automobile didn't get rid of people riding horses, but it changed why people rode horses. Photography changed why people painted. I'm sure many people called these changes unsporting. Same with automation (and ChatGPT). Automation doesn't get rid of hand-crafted things, but it changes the meaning behind them. The market for hand-made goods is alive and well in spite of cheaper automated alternatives. I own a hand made mantle clock and it's one of my favorite possessions. I'm sure human-written material will become more valued when it isn't the only means of creation. No discipline truly goes away, but our relationship to it changes.

wavemode 3y ago
This is a really great point, and puts into words the feeling I've had about GPT for many years now but had trouble describing. Thanks.
lmpdev 3y ago
I think the horse metaphor is more meant to relate to the majority of jobs. People won't ascribe extra meaning to the average middle manager's slight alteration to a PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet. The car changed the way we view horses. But it also diminished horse populations to a fraction of what they were.
- madrox 3y ago
  There's also a lot fewer blacksmiths than there used to be. As a middle manager, I'm not a protected class. My job didn't exist a century ago and I'd be naive to think it deserves to be around a minute longer than is required. On a long enough timeline, we're all elevator operators.
toyg 3y ago
The problem is the interconnectedness of "practicing a discipline" and "surviving". The modern economic system irreparably entangles the two concepts, so that if you want to survive, your discipline better be economically viable. Horse-breeding stopped to be something that can be done by anyone but a minuscule section of the population; same for painting and clock-making. LLMs are poised to do that to large swaths of professions that were based on writing.
- madrox 3y ago
  This is true, and this has been happening for all of time. Computerization eliminated hosts of jobs, lest we forget "computer" used to be a job title a century ago. Elevator operator also used to be a thing people did to support a family. It would be naive to think this professional evolution would stop in our lifetime.
  - toyg 3y ago
    I don't disagree, but it clashes with what has been preached by western societies for almost half a century. When factory workers first experienced the brutal reality of advanced automation, the societal answer was "become a knowledge worker instead! Robots can't do creative things!". A few people knew (and said) that it was a delusion, but the necessary technology was somewhat slow to appear, so it looked like the principle held. I suspect we're going to quickly re-evaluate a lot of '70s political and philosophical works over the next 5-10 years.
    - mjn 3y ago
      That's a good point. I wonder how many of those '70s theorists of technology would have predicted that, 50 years later, UPS driver and plumber would be (seemingly) harder to automate than knowledge work. Not really to blame them; it's only obvious in retrospect. But I agree we may need to rethink some of the established analysis that was based on different assumptions.
motohagiography 3y ago
Beautifully said. The horses example is rich because there are experiences and virtues that are essential to activities, and when we relate to the activity differently, it raises the question of which aspects or facets of it were essential. With horses, the feedback in a purely animal to animal relationship was a channel to our relationship with the rest of nature, the world, and the universe or creation. Only a tiny minority of people are able to experience that today, and an even more tiny subset of those bring the virtues of that relationship into the world around them to enrich our apprehension of it. The same could be said for ditch digging, but now that nobody has to do that manually anymore, rich people do crossfit to experience the attendant physical virtue. I'd wonder what the post-AI version will be. With AI and language models, something similar will likely occur, where like cars and engines, it creates mediation and decoupling from what was natural and real, and confines experience within material and largely narrative abstractions. I can write and create movingly sometimes because I've spent a lifetime practising it. AI (like all tech) creates economic indifference to "content," sort of the way people talking about the "alienation of labour," were on about 150 years ago. I think there are essential virtues in writing (now "content creation") that automating it to the point of economic indifference will also cause us to eschew, and we don't know them until we miss them - and maybe hire personal "reality" trainers to help us reconnect with what we feel we have lost.

by madrox 3y ago

wavemode 3y ago

This is a really great point, and puts into words the feeling I've had about GPT for many years now but had trouble describing. Thanks.

lmpdev 3y ago

I think the horse metaphor is more meant to relate to the majority of jobs. People won't ascribe extra meaning to the average middle manager's slight alteration to a PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet. The car changed the way we view horses. But it also diminished horse populations to a fraction of what they were.

madrox 3y ago
There's also a lot fewer blacksmiths than there used to be. As a middle manager, I'm not a protected class. My job didn't exist a century ago and I'd be naive to think it deserves to be around a minute longer than is required. On a long enough timeline, we're all elevator operators.

toyg 3y ago

The problem is the interconnectedness of "practicing a discipline" and "surviving". The modern economic system irreparably entangles the two concepts, so that if you want to survive, your discipline better be economically viable. Horse-breeding stopped to be something that can be done by anyone but a minuscule section of the population; same for painting and clock-making. LLMs are poised to do that to large swaths of professions that were based on writing.

madrox 3y ago
This is true, and this has been happening for all of time. Computerization eliminated hosts of jobs, lest we forget "computer" used to be a job title a century ago. Elevator operator also used to be a thing people did to support a family. It would be naive to think this professional evolution would stop in our lifetime.
- toyg 3y ago
  I don't disagree, but it clashes with what has been preached by western societies for almost half a century. When factory workers first experienced the brutal reality of advanced automation, the societal answer was "become a knowledge worker instead! Robots can't do creative things!". A few people knew (and said) that it was a delusion, but the necessary technology was somewhat slow to appear, so it looked like the principle held. I suspect we're going to quickly re-evaluate a lot of '70s political and philosophical works over the next 5-10 years.
  - mjn 3y ago
    That's a good point. I wonder how many of those '70s theorists of technology would have predicted that, 50 years later, UPS driver and plumber would be (seemingly) harder to automate than knowledge work. Not really to blame them; it's only obvious in retrospect. But I agree we may need to rethink some of the established analysis that was based on different assumptions.

motohagiography 3y ago

Beautifully said. The horses example is rich because there are experiences and virtues that are essential to activities, and when we relate to the activity differently, it raises the question of which aspects or facets of it were essential. With horses, the feedback in a purely animal to animal relationship was a channel to our relationship with the rest of nature, the world, and the universe or creation. Only a tiny minority of people are able to experience that today, and an even more tiny subset of those bring the virtues of that relationship into the world around them to enrich our apprehension of it. The same could be said for ditch digging, but now that nobody has to do that manually anymore, rich people do crossfit to experience the attendant physical virtue. I'd wonder what the post-AI version will be. With AI and language models, something similar will likely occur, where like cars and engines, it creates mediation and decoupling from what was natural and real, and confines experience within material and largely narrative abstractions. I can write and create movingly sometimes because I've spent a lifetime practising it. AI (like all tech) creates economic indifference to "content," sort of the way people talking about the "alienation of labour," were on about 150 years ago. I think there are essential virtues in writing (now "content creation") that automating it to the point of economic indifference will also cause us to eschew, and we don't know them until we miss them - and maybe hire personal "reality" trainers to help us reconnect with what we feel we have lost.