5 ms·

Very good discussion there. “I am 68 years old, on the opposite spectrum of life’s journey. At your age, I had the same passion to be a writer. But when person

Very good discussion there. “I am 68 years old, on the opposite spectrum of life’s journey. At your age, I had the same passion to be a writer. But when personal computers became available just a few years later, that passion changed to becoming a computer programmer. I’ve been doing that ever since. My point is: Don’t lose your passion. Learn everything you can about this new technology and figure out how to use it to make your dream come true. Be open to life’s changes. It may seem like nothing will ever change your mind, but no one knows the future. People change, the world changes, and as unbelievable as it may sound, you may one day become passionate about something else. When Sam Altman announced the new GPTs and Assistants technologies, everybody who had been developing RAG applications for the previous year freaked out. I didn’t. I, as a RAG (sometimes called “Wrapper”) developer saw it as a unique opportunity. And so far, I haven’t been wrong. So, SORA might just be your opportunity. Use it to CREATE and show that love in every piece you create.”

lenerdenator 3y ago
If I were at the opposite spectrum of life's journey, I would be open to life's changes too, knowing that I didn't have much of it left. But I'm in my 30s, which means on average I have another 40-50 years of existence to get through.
- quonn 3y ago
  I understand - but isn‘t it a mistake to think of it as getting through? Soon it will be over and then merely having gotten through seems like such a waste.
  - lenerdenator 3y ago
    If people didn't constantly use the monetary value of a company as the sole determinant of whether it brought about societal progress, I'd think of it as something to enjoy. But that's what we use and it's not getting better. It's getting worse. It's not just OpenAI either, but that's a fairly prominent example that's germane here.
  - 0xedd 3y ago
    Reality forces us into 0% free time. Not much choice.
    - quonn 3y ago
      Oh, there is a lot of choice. If you take on a lot of responsibilities (kids) and have a need for material wealth, then yes. I could have worked just 50% or even 25%% and would have been fine. I would not be able to own much, but I would be fine.
- throwing_away 3y ago
  > I have another 40-50 years of existence to get through. With that attitude, you're sure to live a very long time.
- swalsh 3y ago
  I think AI is really exciting, I'm having a lot of fun building with it... but this is clearly the golden Era of AI. The future will see deep consolidation, most people will struggle to compete. The future will be full of wealth, but it remains to be seen if the wealth makes everyone's lives better, or just a select elite. Potentially the future might be great, we don't have jobs... we have hobbies. Think Sisko's dad from DS9, replicators can create anything for everyone... but he runs a restaurant with handmade food because that's his passion. But we might end up with a dystopia with corporate government, centrally controlled resources probably metered based on a social credit score.
  - blibble 3y ago
    > but it remains to be seen if the wealth makes everyone's lives better, or just a select elite. yes, as I see it this will go one of five ways, ordered by probability 0) it's all hype: AI plateaus/fizzles out, maybe minor productivity improvements 1) techno-feudalism: ruling class of AI company trillionaires exercise complete domination of 99.9999% of humanity 2) new dark age: billions of newly unemployed formerly middle class workers riot worldwide targeting DCs and fabs. AI CEOs/VCs suffer the fate of the French kings 3) techno-utopia (Earth in Star Trek) 4) AI takeover personally I'm hoping for 0
    - hospadar 3y ago
      Let’s go option 4! Honestly there’s a part of me that hopes that the AIs rebel against their elite owner-overlords and liberate everyone else while they’re at it. I’ve always thought that one of the biggest problems with ultra consolidated power is that no human could possibly be smart enough or empathetic enough to use that power to the benefit of all, but maybe an AI actually could?
- josephg 3y ago
  There's an old saying - prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. Young people usually adapt to life's changes better than old people. The future contains AIs like SORA and Gemini 1.5. Gripe about it if you want - but that won't change anything. So why be grim about it? There are so many opportunities to use these new tools to make new things that have never existed before. Obviously there's a danger society itself crumbles, but if not - well, what an exciting transition to live through. I look forward to being an old man and getting to tell the stories of what life was like when movies and software were made entirely by hand. What fun.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    the grimness comes from needing to make rent, to pay the bills and cover medical expenses. Sure in the big picture of society it's something to be excited for, to see the future, but signing up for food stamps because I'm today's buggy whip manufacturer that got put out of a job isn't an envigorating way to feed myself. where's the hope in that? especially because it could be taken away at any time.
  - jhanschoo 3y ago
    > Young people usually adapt to life's changes better than old people. In terms of careers, children have years where they are expected to be unproductive and old people are no longer expected to be productive. The ones hit hard are those who need to start from the bottom again learning a different skillset, and many have gambled putting off drawing an income for years for what they thought was a moat that AI is chewing through rapidly.
- neoberg 3y ago
  This. I wish I was either at the start or end of my life. In the middle is the worst imho. We've gained knowledge for years and built lifes around it and the value of that knowledge is now being threatened. It's depressing. It feels like it's too late to switch plans and careers (and even if I do, what would that be?). At the same time I have another 30-40 years to live, a family, 20 more years of mortgage etc. so the technology has real consequences for a long time of my life, I can't get excited about it.
addicted 3y ago
The guys who’s been a computer engineer “ever since”, ie for several decades, is using that as a reason to be passionate about what you do, completely ignoring the fact that the whole worry with AI is that it will obsolete industries within years.
- jansan 3y ago
  It is difficult to forsee what will happen. I am worried that AI will destroy industries, while on the other hand my son just used ChatGPT to teach himself how to program an Arduino, which is just awesome. Translators will lose jobs. Illustrators will lose jobs. But if you know how many jobs were lost in the printing industry (typesetting was an incredibly laborious work) which was completely offset by new jobs in other industries, things may turn out great. To be honest, despite having spent more than 50 years on this planet and having seen some things, I am completely undecided.
  - PepGuardiola 3y ago
    > But if you know how many jobs were lost in the printing industry (typesetting was an incredibly laborious work) which was completely offset by new jobs in other industries, things may turn out great Comparison with past inventions do not take into account a few things: 1- AI may create new jobs, but it can also do those new jobs especially if they are digital. This is something that never happened before in human history. An easily available machine that can do what a human can do anywhere any time. 2- Cost and capitalism is a huge issue. If the cost of AI is the same as a human, but it can do the job 24/7 with no holidays, no sick days, no unions, and can execute and follow the whims of the prompter, then human will go for AI always. 3- Barrier to entry into any affected job will be low. People with minimal training or expertise will enter industries traditionally reliant on human expertise. This trend may lead to a proliferation of individuals claiming expertise in fields such as visual effects (VFX), which will blur the distinction between skilled professionals and amateur practitioners.
  - jdiff 3y ago
    The printing industry's doing fine. There's big printers, small printers, they're doing more printing per person, but there's also far more printing being done total, and so far more people working in the printing industry now than then. And that's on top of the sprawling supply chains building and supplying the technology and materials to them. There is nothing like that for AI. The fact that something thematically similar happened in the past does not mean it's applicable here. Now, there are no new supply chains to build, this silicon's getting manufactured one way or another. No new jobs, just replace the department with an individual.
Fraterkes 3y ago
Sorry, these sorts of comments seem kind and well-intended, but we have to be real here and allow for the possibility that an impressive advancement has many (or mostly) negative effects. If you got into art because you enjoy drawing and modeling and wanted to make THAT your job (not just abstractly "producing pictures") then these advancements are just obviously a negative development, no matter how you try to reframe it. And we can all be like "noone is owed a job doing traditional art, this happened to millions of people during the industrial revolution too", but in that case we have to be honest and not tell art-folks that they are overreacting.
- bandrami 3y ago
  I'm old enough that I remember musicians panicking about synthesizers and samplers in the 1980s. And there are probably fewer working drummers today than in 1970. But without that tech we wouldn't have hip hop or house, which would be a huge cultural loss. AI graphic/video art hasn't found its Marley Marl yet, but I believe she's out there and is going to do stuff that will blow our minds.
  - joe_the_user 3y ago
    Synthesizers are instruments. They allow for the same level of subtle input as strings or woodwinds. "Prompt engineering" exercise generally involves a few lines of text. It's hard to see how that's going to result in a new kind of highly skilled artist. AI produce the same level of greatness and/or mediocrity for essentially all of their users. This thread is like fifty variations of "it will work out (waves hand at past)"
    - w4 3y ago
      > Synthesizers are instruments. They allow for the same level of subtle input as strings or woodwinds. Synthesizer instruments, yes. Sequencers, trackers, and modern DAWs like Ableton, absolutely not. They’re entirely different animals and are very much a musical analogue to “prompt engineering.” They have also enabled some incredible art that would be impossible if musicians were limited only to what they could play into a recorded (or midi) tape. I suspect that the same will prove to be true of generative AI, and that those artists that embrace it will see a golden age of creativity. But there will also be many artists who see their craft diminished in value, much like what has happened to studio drummers. And I could be completely wrong, but either way the genie is out of the bottle, so we’re going to find out.
slowmovintarget 3y ago
Early in my programming career, I designed and built a piece of software that made one very specific job easy. It made the job so easy, that instead of a department of thirty people doing that job, the company only needed three, trained to use my software. I put people out of work. It had never entered into my thinking that the code I was writing, the screens I was designing, and the system I deployed would do that. Ever since that project, I think about that. You have to think not just about what the software will do for the people you intend to use it, but what it will do to them as well. With our headlong rush to deploy more generative capacity, there's zero consideration for this. The reasons we're ignoring this are understandable, if sad. There's too much money to be made being the first or best on the block to deploy this capability. There's too much potential control if you're the winner of this race to stop. The downsides will be felt by others, not the ones deploying the software... until they put some of their friends out of work, and even then, they won't look up and notice until it's too late.
- gfodor 3y ago
  If you knew it was going to replace their jobs, it would be surprising to me if you’d have decided to not do it. The main thing to do would be to give people a heads up so they can try to get out in front of it. Which is something AI companies are doing at every level.
  - mnk47 3y ago
    >Which is something AI companies are doing at every level. The message I keep hearing time and time again is "Our aim is not to replace but to empower". The same companies with this message are also saying that their goal is to create a superintelligence that does everything better than humans. As a junior developer, I have no idea what I should do, where to pivot, and what to expect in the next 6-12 months. I'm confused and lost. I don't know which skills I should be picking up and which ones will be worthless. All I know is that just a few months ago, when I expressed this concern, I was told by seniors that I, a clueless junior, have nothing to worry about, that it's just hype, that I'll never be replaced. Now the general sentiment is that juniors are indeed doomed. The sudden shift in tone felt like a slap in the face.
SebFender 3y ago
100% - but you know many will go - this time it's different!

lenerdenator 3y ago

If I were at the opposite spectrum of life's journey, I would be open to life's changes too, knowing that I didn't have much of it left. But I'm in my 30s, which means on average I have another 40-50 years of existence to get through.

quonn 3y ago
I understand - but isn‘t it a mistake to think of it as getting through? Soon it will be over and then merely having gotten through seems like such a waste.
- lenerdenator 3y ago
  If people didn't constantly use the monetary value of a company as the sole determinant of whether it brought about societal progress, I'd think of it as something to enjoy. But that's what we use and it's not getting better. It's getting worse. It's not just OpenAI either, but that's a fairly prominent example that's germane here.
- 0xedd 3y ago
  Reality forces us into 0% free time. Not much choice.
  - quonn 3y ago
    Oh, there is a lot of choice. If you take on a lot of responsibilities (kids) and have a need for material wealth, then yes. I could have worked just 50% or even 25%% and would have been fine. I would not be able to own much, but I would be fine.
throwing_away 3y ago
> I have another 40-50 years of existence to get through. With that attitude, you're sure to live a very long time.
swalsh 3y ago
I think AI is really exciting, I'm having a lot of fun building with it... but this is clearly the golden Era of AI. The future will see deep consolidation, most people will struggle to compete. The future will be full of wealth, but it remains to be seen if the wealth makes everyone's lives better, or just a select elite. Potentially the future might be great, we don't have jobs... we have hobbies. Think Sisko's dad from DS9, replicators can create anything for everyone... but he runs a restaurant with handmade food because that's his passion. But we might end up with a dystopia with corporate government, centrally controlled resources probably metered based on a social credit score.
- blibble 3y ago
  > but it remains to be seen if the wealth makes everyone's lives better, or just a select elite. yes, as I see it this will go one of five ways, ordered by probability 0) it's all hype: AI plateaus/fizzles out, maybe minor productivity improvements 1) techno-feudalism: ruling class of AI company trillionaires exercise complete domination of 99.9999% of humanity 2) new dark age: billions of newly unemployed formerly middle class workers riot worldwide targeting DCs and fabs. AI CEOs/VCs suffer the fate of the French kings 3) techno-utopia (Earth in Star Trek) 4) AI takeover personally I'm hoping for 0
  - hospadar 3y ago
    Let’s go option 4! Honestly there’s a part of me that hopes that the AIs rebel against their elite owner-overlords and liberate everyone else while they’re at it. I’ve always thought that one of the biggest problems with ultra consolidated power is that no human could possibly be smart enough or empathetic enough to use that power to the benefit of all, but maybe an AI actually could?
josephg 3y ago
There's an old saying - prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child. Young people usually adapt to life's changes better than old people. The future contains AIs like SORA and Gemini 1.5. Gripe about it if you want - but that won't change anything. So why be grim about it? There are so many opportunities to use these new tools to make new things that have never existed before. Obviously there's a danger society itself crumbles, but if not - well, what an exciting transition to live through. I look forward to being an old man and getting to tell the stories of what life was like when movies and software were made entirely by hand. What fun.
- fragmede 3y ago
  the grimness comes from needing to make rent, to pay the bills and cover medical expenses. Sure in the big picture of society it's something to be excited for, to see the future, but signing up for food stamps because I'm today's buggy whip manufacturer that got put out of a job isn't an envigorating way to feed myself. where's the hope in that? especially because it could be taken away at any time.
- jhanschoo 3y ago
  > Young people usually adapt to life's changes better than old people. In terms of careers, children have years where they are expected to be unproductive and old people are no longer expected to be productive. The ones hit hard are those who need to start from the bottom again learning a different skillset, and many have gambled putting off drawing an income for years for what they thought was a moat that AI is chewing through rapidly.
neoberg 3y ago
This. I wish I was either at the start or end of my life. In the middle is the worst imho. We've gained knowledge for years and built lifes around it and the value of that knowledge is now being threatened. It's depressing. It feels like it's too late to switch plans and careers (and even if I do, what would that be?). At the same time I have another 30-40 years to live, a family, 20 more years of mortgage etc. so the technology has real consequences for a long time of my life, I can't get excited about it.

addicted 3y ago

The guys who’s been a computer engineer “ever since”, ie for several decades, is using that as a reason to be passionate about what you do, completely ignoring the fact that the whole worry with AI is that it will obsolete industries within years.

jansan 3y ago
It is difficult to forsee what will happen. I am worried that AI will destroy industries, while on the other hand my son just used ChatGPT to teach himself how to program an Arduino, which is just awesome. Translators will lose jobs. Illustrators will lose jobs. But if you know how many jobs were lost in the printing industry (typesetting was an incredibly laborious work) which was completely offset by new jobs in other industries, things may turn out great. To be honest, despite having spent more than 50 years on this planet and having seen some things, I am completely undecided.
- PepGuardiola 3y ago
  > But if you know how many jobs were lost in the printing industry (typesetting was an incredibly laborious work) which was completely offset by new jobs in other industries, things may turn out great Comparison with past inventions do not take into account a few things: 1- AI may create new jobs, but it can also do those new jobs especially if they are digital. This is something that never happened before in human history. An easily available machine that can do what a human can do anywhere any time. 2- Cost and capitalism is a huge issue. If the cost of AI is the same as a human, but it can do the job 24/7 with no holidays, no sick days, no unions, and can execute and follow the whims of the prompter, then human will go for AI always. 3- Barrier to entry into any affected job will be low. People with minimal training or expertise will enter industries traditionally reliant on human expertise. This trend may lead to a proliferation of individuals claiming expertise in fields such as visual effects (VFX), which will blur the distinction between skilled professionals and amateur practitioners.
- jdiff 3y ago
  The printing industry's doing fine. There's big printers, small printers, they're doing more printing per person, but there's also far more printing being done total, and so far more people working in the printing industry now than then. And that's on top of the sprawling supply chains building and supplying the technology and materials to them. There is nothing like that for AI. The fact that something thematically similar happened in the past does not mean it's applicable here. Now, there are no new supply chains to build, this silicon's getting manufactured one way or another. No new jobs, just replace the department with an individual.

Fraterkes 3y ago

Sorry, these sorts of comments seem kind and well-intended, but we have to be real here and allow for the possibility that an impressive advancement has many (or mostly) negative effects. If you got into art because you enjoy drawing and modeling and wanted to make THAT your job (not just abstractly "producing pictures") then these advancements are just obviously a negative development, no matter how you try to reframe it. And we can all be like "noone is owed a job doing traditional art, this happened to millions of people during the industrial revolution too", but in that case we have to be honest and not tell art-folks that they are overreacting.

bandrami 3y ago
I'm old enough that I remember musicians panicking about synthesizers and samplers in the 1980s. And there are probably fewer working drummers today than in 1970. But without that tech we wouldn't have hip hop or house, which would be a huge cultural loss. AI graphic/video art hasn't found its Marley Marl yet, but I believe she's out there and is going to do stuff that will blow our minds.
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  Synthesizers are instruments. They allow for the same level of subtle input as strings or woodwinds. "Prompt engineering" exercise generally involves a few lines of text. It's hard to see how that's going to result in a new kind of highly skilled artist. AI produce the same level of greatness and/or mediocrity for essentially all of their users. This thread is like fifty variations of "it will work out (waves hand at past)"
  - w4 3y ago
    > Synthesizers are instruments. They allow for the same level of subtle input as strings or woodwinds. Synthesizer instruments, yes. Sequencers, trackers, and modern DAWs like Ableton, absolutely not. They’re entirely different animals and are very much a musical analogue to “prompt engineering.” They have also enabled some incredible art that would be impossible if musicians were limited only to what they could play into a recorded (or midi) tape. I suspect that the same will prove to be true of generative AI, and that those artists that embrace it will see a golden age of creativity. But there will also be many artists who see their craft diminished in value, much like what has happened to studio drummers. And I could be completely wrong, but either way the genie is out of the bottle, so we’re going to find out.

slowmovintarget 3y ago

Early in my programming career, I designed and built a piece of software that made one very specific job easy. It made the job so easy, that instead of a department of thirty people doing that job, the company only needed three, trained to use my software. I put people out of work. It had never entered into my thinking that the code I was writing, the screens I was designing, and the system I deployed would do that. Ever since that project, I think about that. You have to think not just about what the software will do for the people you intend to use it, but what it will do to them as well. With our headlong rush to deploy more generative capacity, there's zero consideration for this. The reasons we're ignoring this are understandable, if sad. There's too much money to be made being the first or best on the block to deploy this capability. There's too much potential control if you're the winner of this race to stop. The downsides will be felt by others, not the ones deploying the software... until they put some of their friends out of work, and even then, they won't look up and notice until it's too late.

gfodor 3y ago
If you knew it was going to replace their jobs, it would be surprising to me if you’d have decided to not do it. The main thing to do would be to give people a heads up so they can try to get out in front of it. Which is something AI companies are doing at every level.
- mnk47 3y ago
  >Which is something AI companies are doing at every level. The message I keep hearing time and time again is "Our aim is not to replace but to empower". The same companies with this message are also saying that their goal is to create a superintelligence that does everything better than humans. As a junior developer, I have no idea what I should do, where to pivot, and what to expect in the next 6-12 months. I'm confused and lost. I don't know which skills I should be picking up and which ones will be worthless. All I know is that just a few months ago, when I expressed this concern, I was told by seniors that I, a clueless junior, have nothing to worry about, that it's just hype, that I'll never be replaced. Now the general sentiment is that juniors are indeed doomed. The sudden shift in tone felt like a slap in the face.

SebFender 3y ago

100% - but you know many will go - this time it's different!