4 ms·
The things that a lot of these types analyses miss is that while it makes sense to argue that LLMs may enable more overall work by humans, this work exists at a
by hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
The things that a lot of these types analyses miss is that while it makes sense to argue that LLMs may enable more overall work by humans, this work exists at a higher difficulty level that many people just aren't able to accomplish.
Here's a specific example: ChatGPT has already started taking away the work of copywriters - there have been a bunch of mainstream media articles about this. I think it's fine to argue "That type of copywriting was low-value work anyway. Now this means that sales and marketing folks will be able to operate at a higher strategic level since they no longer have to deal as much with 'how should this specific blurb on the website be phrased'." The problem with this is 2 fold:
1. A lot of that "low value work" is how new folks learn the tools of the trade to begin with. Over the past 30 or more years technology has done a very good job at "removing" the lower rungs of the career ladder. Remember those stories we used to hear about how folks "worked their way up from the mailroom, or from being a secretary"? The mailroom and secretaries largely don't exist anymore.
2. In my experience and belief, there are a large swath of people that just want to be given instructions and then execute them well and with pride. I think it bodes very, very, very poorly for society if all of those types of jobs go away and the response to those people is basically "fine, you can exist at a level just above starving". We had a booming post WWII middle class because there were tons of these types of good paying factory (and office) jobs that allowed people to have dignity in their work. The destruction of those types of jobs is a huge part of our current social strife and "deaths of dispair" in my opinion.
- pradn 3y agoRe point #1 there has been a big shift in the corporate world to hiring vendors for any "non-essential" services. So now the chance of someone moving up from the mail room is low. There's been a progressive shift in how corporations work. It's an organizational change.
- michaelrpeskin 3y agoI was just talking about this idea related to technology in general making it hard for people to break in at the entry level. Even something as simple as construction: Before mechanization, you needed a bunch of "ditch diggers" to do the manual labor. And after being on the site for a while, you'd start to pick up things and then can move up to more skilled labor while 1) getting paid to do the low skilled labor and 2) learning on the job while still providing value. As tech takes away the low skill jobs, the skill level for "entry level" becomes higher and there's no way to learn on the job, you need to pay for education to level up enough to get started. LLMs are just the current example of this, but it's been happening for years. Not saying it's good or bad, but it is interesting that "working your way up" gets harder over time because it's harder to get that entry level low skill work.
- waldothedog 3y agoEven if you were a contractor performing these “non-essential services” it isn’t uncommon to take that experience and “move up” by moving to another organization. This pattern is also broken by the dynamic described in parent comment
- idle_zealot 3y agoRe: 2. Is the problem in your eyes the "just above starving" part? i.e. they can't live comfortably on whatever handouts they receive? Or is the issue that they know their labor is inefficient and that they have no way to contribute to society?
- science4sail 3y agoThe latter - even medieval and early modern nobility had to build elaborate stories/justifications about why they were useful to society and not just parasites.
- truculent 3y agoI wonder if pilots will be the model for how jobs will be trained for and done in the face of increasing automation. On the other hand, higher stakes than most jobs, and much more rigorous regulations and feedback loops might mean it’s not feasible in other industries.