9 ms·

Well, this sounds like perfect tasks for GPT: "Participants responded to a total of 18 tasks (or as many as they could within the given time frame). These task

Well, this sounds like perfect tasks for GPT: "Participants responded to a total of 18 tasks (or as many as they could within the given time frame). These tasks spanned various domains. Specifically, they can be categorized into four types: creativity (e.g., “Propose at least 10 ideas for a new shoe targeting an underserved market or sport.”), analytical thinking (e.g., “Segment the footwear industry market based on users.”), writing proficiency (e.g., “Draft a press release marketing copy for your product.”), and persuasiveness (e.g., “Pen an inspirational memo to employees detailing why your product would outshine competitors.”)." Here is the GPT response to the first task: https://chat.openai.com/share/db7556f7-6036-4b3d-a61a-9cd253f094fd https://chat.openai.com/share/db7556f7-6036-4b3d-a61a-9cd253... A confident GPT hallucination is almost indistinguishable from typical management consulting material...

smeej 3y ago
Several of those aren't even new.
highwaylights 3y ago
1) Your ideas are bad. 2) Spreadsheets exist. 3) No-one cares about your marketing copy. 4) No-one finds your c-suite babble inspirational. This is almost perfect input to an LLM exactly because of how low value it is in the first place.
- djtango 3y ago
  Ha it's fun to dunk on management consultants but I think the magic is they are like pop music producers. Somehow they're able to make the C suite hoover up LLM shovelware the same way top producers can take super obvious music and sell I V vi IV but when we try the same chords it's uninspired and no one wants to listen to it
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    Or, you have a break out hit like the Spice Girls. If it was so bad, then why do people listen? There is still a market. Does the market suck? Full of idiots? Your argument ends up being that successful things are bad, because humans are just idiots and thus if something is successful it is because it is just liked by idiots. As much as I might agree generally, it doesn't get you far.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      Back then, payola meant that people listened whatever the labels wanted to make popular. it's very much an intentional, manufacturered factory.
      - warkdarrior 3y ago
        Honey, everything is an "intentional, manufactured factory". Or do you just wake up every morning and say to yourself "let me type some random code and see what kind of software comes out"??
    - norir 3y ago
      > Your argument ends up being that successful things are bad, because humans are just idiots and thus if something is successful it is because it is just liked by idiots. I mean I'm not sure that this is that far from the truth in some domains, though it depends on how you define idiocy. There is, for example, a market for demolition derbies. Of course all of us are idiots in some ways so we should be careful about whom we disparage.
  - pydry 3y ago
    The magic is in: A) Forming cross company cliques (a lot of C suite is ex consultant and they scratch each others' backs). B) ego stroking and typical sales ("this executive is a visionary who must be furnished with top quality steak and strippers") C) Letting you know on the sly what their other customers are doing that seems to be working. D) Providing industrial grade ass cover for decisions that the C suite want to make but are afraid to make by themselves (like layoffs).
    - jamiegreen 3y ago
      Don’t underestimate the ass covering. I recon 60% of management consulting work is just to ass cover for a director with no conviction
      - pydry 3y ago
        Yeah, I think that's the majority of the grunt work done by junior consultants. I don't doubt that if the high level decision agreed upon is "more layoffs because AI" and they were asked for a 60 page report to justify it that ChatGPT would help inordinately in fleshing it out with something that sounds fairly plausible.
        ghaff 3y ago
        There's a lot of boilerplate that actually takes quite a while to write from scratch. If the people involved have a pretty good idea in their heads of what fundamentals are fairly sensible and which are probably sort of irrelevant or even wrong, something like ChatGPT is actually pretty good at churning out at least a decent pre-draft that can save quite a bit of time. I've used it a fair bit for introductory background that I can certainly clean up faster than I could put together from scratch.
      - corysama 3y ago
        The more expensive the cover the better. “I paid a world-class consulting consultant company top dollar to vet this idea and they produced ton of documents about how great it was. And, yet it failed. But, I’m not at fault here. What more would you have had me do?” There was an article on HN years ago about top grade from Harvard-like schools being sucked into consulting companies and discovering their job was to be paid tons of money writing reports that support whatever the exec of the moment wanted to hear.
  - mlinhares 3y ago
    It’s insane that people think producing pop music is easy. Competing on the pop music market is a cutthroat business with a lot of competition and the good ones get their price back in gold. When Scorpions wanted to be resurrected they hired Desmond Child to produce them and he absolutely crushed. These people are very good at what they do and there are very few of them.
    - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
      It’s also insane people think running a large business is easy, or that management consultants aren’t worth what they’re paid.
      - jack_riminton 3y ago
        Worth here is the key word. I did an MBA which was specifically designed to get people into consulting, we did many consulting projects for real multinantionals and the key lesson was: "What does the hidden client want?" i.e. someone has been tasked with getting some consultants to come up with a suggestion, the key question however is what does THEIR boss want to hear. If you can work that out and give it to them then you've earned your 'worth'
        ghaff 3y ago
        Well, there's also the case where some internal engineering and product management think they have the right answer. But it may be a literally bet the company sort of thing. (Especially outside the software realm where once the bus has left the station it's not turning around.) Now I know there are people here whose reaction is that executive management should just shut up and listen to what the worker bees say. But it actually doesn't seem unreasonable to me (and I've been on the product management end of things in a case like this) to have some outside perspective from some people who are mostly pretty smart to nod their heads and say this seems sensible. As a bonus they create big spreadsheets that make the business planning types happy and keep them out from underfoot.
        hcks 3y ago
  - im3w1l 3y ago
    Sounds like you are tunnel visioning in your analysis of the music? There are so many more things to it than the chord progression. On the songwriting side, there's the lyrics which have both a phonetic and a semantic component. There's also the fact that many people will mishear the lyrics and their evaluation of them will be based on the mishearing. There's the melody. Does it work together with the chords to highlight the key parts of the lyrics? Then there's the performance where there are a million ways to stand out or flop. Loudness, timbre, timing and even detuning can all be used for expression.
    - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
      Are you trying to tell me that "starbucks lovers" was intentional?
- johndhi 3y ago
  Often the benefit of management consultants is they help the company feel better about firing or laying off people. Actually a robot would be perfect at that. No one likes doing layoffs but chat gpt won't mind
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - emidln 3y ago
    > Actually a robot would be perfect at that. No one likes doing layoffs but chat gpt won't mind Maybe chatgpt should be trained to care.
  - hfjjbf 3y ago
    [dead]
iterminate 3y ago
> A confident GPT hallucination is almost indistinguishable from typical management consulting material... If you're measuring based on output, sure, but... the value of any knowledge worker is primarily driven by the input, that is, a client doesn't want "10 ideas" they want "10 [valuable] ideas [informed by the understanding of the business and the market they're operating in]". If a management consultant said "boat shoes" in response to this question they would not have a client much longer. You could apply this same nonsense task to software engineering, i.e: ask ChatGPT to "write 10 lines of code" and it'll be indistinguishable from the code we churn out day after day.
- flir 3y ago
  So you ask for 20 ideas and filter. Even if you throw away 19, it's still useful.
  - jprete 3y ago
    They’re all bad ideas, though.
  - genman 3y ago
    Not necessarily if the remaining one idea is still garbage.
    - flir 3y ago
      It's not. That's the purpose of filtering them.
      - dmbche 3y ago
        How many turds should i filter though until I suddenly find gold?
        genghisjahn 3y ago
        How bad do you want the gold?
noelwelsh 3y ago
The GPT responses read like they were lifted from MAD magazine.
shakow 3y ago
> Target: Dog Walkers > Features: Built-in waste bag dispenser I'm not yet sure whether I hate it or love it. > Target: Visually Impaired Individuals > Features: Haptic feedback Haptic shoes, how revolutionary!
- Stinky_Lisa 3y ago
  Yeah some of those have potential lol
- cgriswald 3y ago
  I’m just imagining stepping in dog poop and my only way to help myself is also covered in dog poop. The shoes seem to give you two options for cleaning up your dogs poop: (1) Bend down twice, once for the bag, once for the poop. (2) Bend down once nice and close to the poop and get a bigger whiff than otherwise. I’m just not looking for ways to interact manually with my shoes more than I have to…
- datadrivenangel 3y ago
  I saw a built-in waste bag dispenser recently while helping walk a friend's dog, and honestly it was pretty convenient.
  - riskable 3y ago
    Yes but how much more convenient would it be with haptic feedback‽
segfaultex 3y ago
> A confident GPT hallucination is almost indistinguishable from typical management consulting material... Sounds perfect for both Harvard and those linked to the institution. My employer has hired McKinsey a few times, known to recruit from HYP, and their output has been subpar to say the least. My entire experience with these institutions has been fairly uniform in that regard. I know it’s anecdotal. But it feels like there’s a lot of confirmation bias with these sorts of studies.
mnd999 3y ago
Makes sense. The bullshit generator can replace professional bullshitters.
moneywoes 3y ago
does that say more about gpt or management consulting

smeej 3y ago

Several of those aren't even new.

highwaylights 3y ago

1) Your ideas are bad. 2) Spreadsheets exist. 3) No-one cares about your marketing copy. 4) No-one finds your c-suite babble inspirational. This is almost perfect input to an LLM exactly because of how low value it is in the first place.

djtango 3y ago
Ha it's fun to dunk on management consultants but I think the magic is they are like pop music producers. Somehow they're able to make the C suite hoover up LLM shovelware the same way top producers can take super obvious music and sell I V vi IV but when we try the same chords it's uninspired and no one wants to listen to it
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  Or, you have a break out hit like the Spice Girls. If it was so bad, then why do people listen? There is still a market. Does the market suck? Full of idiots? Your argument ends up being that successful things are bad, because humans are just idiots and thus if something is successful it is because it is just liked by idiots. As much as I might agree generally, it doesn't get you far.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Back then, payola meant that people listened whatever the labels wanted to make popular. it's very much an intentional, manufacturered factory.
    - warkdarrior 3y ago
      Honey, everything is an "intentional, manufactured factory". Or do you just wake up every morning and say to yourself "let me type some random code and see what kind of software comes out"??
  - norir 3y ago
    > Your argument ends up being that successful things are bad, because humans are just idiots and thus if something is successful it is because it is just liked by idiots. I mean I'm not sure that this is that far from the truth in some domains, though it depends on how you define idiocy. There is, for example, a market for demolition derbies. Of course all of us are idiots in some ways so we should be careful about whom we disparage.
- pydry 3y ago
  The magic is in: A) Forming cross company cliques (a lot of C suite is ex consultant and they scratch each others' backs). B) ego stroking and typical sales ("this executive is a visionary who must be furnished with top quality steak and strippers") C) Letting you know on the sly what their other customers are doing that seems to be working. D) Providing industrial grade ass cover for decisions that the C suite want to make but are afraid to make by themselves (like layoffs).
  - jamiegreen 3y ago
    Don’t underestimate the ass covering. I recon 60% of management consulting work is just to ass cover for a director with no conviction
    - pydry 3y ago
      Yeah, I think that's the majority of the grunt work done by junior consultants. I don't doubt that if the high level decision agreed upon is "more layoffs because AI" and they were asked for a 60 page report to justify it that ChatGPT would help inordinately in fleshing it out with something that sounds fairly plausible.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        There's a lot of boilerplate that actually takes quite a while to write from scratch. If the people involved have a pretty good idea in their heads of what fundamentals are fairly sensible and which are probably sort of irrelevant or even wrong, something like ChatGPT is actually pretty good at churning out at least a decent pre-draft that can save quite a bit of time. I've used it a fair bit for introductory background that I can certainly clean up faster than I could put together from scratch.
    - corysama 3y ago
      The more expensive the cover the better. “I paid a world-class consulting consultant company top dollar to vet this idea and they produced ton of documents about how great it was. And, yet it failed. But, I’m not at fault here. What more would you have had me do?” There was an article on HN years ago about top grade from Harvard-like schools being sucked into consulting companies and discovering their job was to be paid tons of money writing reports that support whatever the exec of the moment wanted to hear.
- mlinhares 3y ago
  It’s insane that people think producing pop music is easy. Competing on the pop music market is a cutthroat business with a lot of competition and the good ones get their price back in gold. When Scorpions wanted to be resurrected they hired Desmond Child to produce them and he absolutely crushed. These people are very good at what they do and there are very few of them.
  - WendyTheWillow 3y ago
    It’s also insane people think running a large business is easy, or that management consultants aren’t worth what they’re paid.
    - jack_riminton 3y ago
      Worth here is the key word. I did an MBA which was specifically designed to get people into consulting, we did many consulting projects for real multinantionals and the key lesson was: "What does the hidden client want?" i.e. someone has been tasked with getting some consultants to come up with a suggestion, the key question however is what does THEIR boss want to hear. If you can work that out and give it to them then you've earned your 'worth'
      - ghaff 3y ago
        Well, there's also the case where some internal engineering and product management think they have the right answer. But it may be a literally bet the company sort of thing. (Especially outside the software realm where once the bus has left the station it's not turning around.) Now I know there are people here whose reaction is that executive management should just shut up and listen to what the worker bees say. But it actually doesn't seem unreasonable to me (and I've been on the product management end of things in a case like this) to have some outside perspective from some people who are mostly pretty smart to nod their heads and say this seems sensible. As a bonus they create big spreadsheets that make the business planning types happy and keep them out from underfoot.
      - hcks 3y ago
- im3w1l 3y ago
  Sounds like you are tunnel visioning in your analysis of the music? There are so many more things to it than the chord progression. On the songwriting side, there's the lyrics which have both a phonetic and a semantic component. There's also the fact that many people will mishear the lyrics and their evaluation of them will be based on the mishearing. There's the melody. Does it work together with the chords to highlight the key parts of the lyrics? Then there's the performance where there are a million ways to stand out or flop. Loudness, timbre, timing and even detuning can all be used for expression.
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
    Are you trying to tell me that "starbucks lovers" was intentional?
johndhi 3y ago
Often the benefit of management consultants is they help the company feel better about firing or laying off people. Actually a robot would be perfect at that. No one likes doing layoffs but chat gpt won't mind
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- emidln 3y ago
  > Actually a robot would be perfect at that. No one likes doing layoffs but chat gpt won't mind Maybe chatgpt should be trained to care.
- hfjjbf 3y ago
  [dead]

iterminate 3y ago

> A confident GPT hallucination is almost indistinguishable from typical management consulting material... If you're measuring based on output, sure, but... the value of any knowledge worker is primarily driven by the input, that is, a client doesn't want "10 ideas" they want "10 [valuable] ideas [informed by the understanding of the business and the market they're operating in]". If a management consultant said "boat shoes" in response to this question they would not have a client much longer. You could apply this same nonsense task to software engineering, i.e: ask ChatGPT to "write 10 lines of code" and it'll be indistinguishable from the code we churn out day after day.

flir 3y ago
So you ask for 20 ideas and filter. Even if you throw away 19, it's still useful.
- jprete 3y ago
  They’re all bad ideas, though.
- genman 3y ago
  Not necessarily if the remaining one idea is still garbage.
  - flir 3y ago
    It's not. That's the purpose of filtering them.
    - dmbche 3y ago
      How many turds should i filter though until I suddenly find gold?
      - genghisjahn 3y ago
        How bad do you want the gold?

noelwelsh 3y ago

The GPT responses read like they were lifted from MAD magazine.

shakow 3y ago

> Target: Dog Walkers > Features: Built-in waste bag dispenser I'm not yet sure whether I hate it or love it. > Target: Visually Impaired Individuals > Features: Haptic feedback Haptic shoes, how revolutionary!

Stinky_Lisa 3y ago
Yeah some of those have potential lol
cgriswald 3y ago
I’m just imagining stepping in dog poop and my only way to help myself is also covered in dog poop. The shoes seem to give you two options for cleaning up your dogs poop: (1) Bend down twice, once for the bag, once for the poop. (2) Bend down once nice and close to the poop and get a bigger whiff than otherwise. I’m just not looking for ways to interact manually with my shoes more than I have to…
datadrivenangel 3y ago
I saw a built-in waste bag dispenser recently while helping walk a friend's dog, and honestly it was pretty convenient.
- riskable 3y ago
  Yes but how much more convenient would it be with haptic feedback‽

segfaultex 3y ago

> A confident GPT hallucination is almost indistinguishable from typical management consulting material... Sounds perfect for both Harvard and those linked to the institution. My employer has hired McKinsey a few times, known to recruit from HYP, and their output has been subpar to say the least. My entire experience with these institutions has been fairly uniform in that regard. I know it’s anecdotal. But it feels like there’s a lot of confirmation bias with these sorts of studies.

mnd999 3y ago

Makes sense. The bullshit generator can replace professional bullshitters.

moneywoes 3y ago

does that say more about gpt or management consulting