8 ms·

AI took their jobs. Now they get paid to make it sound human

50 points by gortok 2y ago

lkramer 2y ago
As a developer, this is kinda where I fear ending up: a glorified editor of crummy AI generated code for a pittance. At that point I'll probably check out of the industry.
- digdugdirk 2y ago
  That's the interesting thought though - what happens to the industry (and all the other creative industries affected) after everyone like you checks out?
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    Performance death by over-performance of code-generators? After that? Rejuvenation of dying systems by constantly generated new systems. Also selling retro software in containers cause it "works"..
    - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
      As in code grows organically- and thus becomes ever more capable but also ever more buggy. Then it needs to die, reasons about the produced horror, promises never again and does it again, forever and ever. Thus the state of the art was produced by the art.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - paxys 2y ago
    If companies are releasing shit products then you pick up a laptop and compete with them. That's always how things have gone in the tech industry.
    - cousin_it 2y ago
      I guess it's a lemon market problem - if other sellers are selling crap for cheap, and there's no way for buyers to verify quality before buying, then you can't make money selling quality stuff for more. Hmm, maybe "certified non-AI data" is a business idea.
      - lkramer 2y ago
        that's touched on in the article. It may be possible as a niche, but there is a whole cottage industry working to bypass the AI detectors.
- cchi_co 2y ago
  [dead]
- carschno 2y ago
  Keep in mind that companies do not necessarily aim to increase efficiency but to de-professionalize. It will be easier to find these "glorified editors" that require minimal education, than current software developers. Consequently, this will make them more replaceable and hence they will have a worse negotiation position when it comes to working conditions etc. It is an old pattern, see for instance: https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-work https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-w...
  - guappa 2y ago
    I think it's harder to verify obscure code than to write it in the first place. I've seen perfectly legit looking code generated by chatgpt, except that the value of the constants were wrong. When you have to verify every single little thing, it's easier to just do it. And certainly doesn't take any less skill.
  - jprete 2y ago
    Companies always want to commodify their complements, right? I wonder if there's a framing where the employees are one of the complements.
- fsndz 2y ago
  True. Some people argue that we are quickly moving from a creator economy to a verifier economy. AI generates a bunch of crap and knowledge workers have to verify and edit (https://www.lycee.ai/blog/the-rise-of-the-verifier-economy https://www.lycee.ai/blog/the-rise-of-the-verifier-economy)
  - bheadmaster 2y ago
    > Some people argue that we are quickly moving from a creator economy to a verifier economy. I wonder if this is a natural development of economic optimization. Computability theory taught us that it is in general easier to verify that an answer is correct (P) than to come up with the answer in the first place (NP).
    - fsndz 2y ago
      This ! And I really like your analogy to computability theory. I wonder if it applies to all economic activities. My experience so far is that verification is nice for simple knowledge tasks. But for the complex ones, doing it from scratch is often better. But I guess this may change as AI systems become better and better.
      - bheadmaster 2y ago
        Of course, brute forcing a solution by verifying a massive amount of garbage is much less efficient than doing it from scratch. Verification becomes more productive than sythesis only when the probability of generated content being correct is significantly high. So I suppose, as AI gets more accurate, verification will become more productive. I'm in a peculiar position with Bing AI. My work provided me an enterprise account, so I can use it for work-related tasks. Often I find myself asking it to write a program for something I don't wanna do myself from scratch, then I just analyze it, see why it doesn't work and fix it. It has got to a point where it's much faster for me to do that, than to read the relevant documentation and figure out how to do it from scratch.
        2y ago
- misja111 2y ago
  This is not much different than being the senior developer managing an outsourced team of developers.
kombookcha 2y ago
"According to Cowart, many of the same freelance writing platforms that have AI detection software in place are simultaneously hiring people to edit content produced by chatbots. That means in some corners of the copywriting ecosystem, almost everything revolves around efforts to avoid the appearance of artificial intelligence. "They're selling AI content and paying you to fix it, and at the same time they're sending you emails about how to write like a human so you don't trigger their AI detector," Cowart says. "It's so insulting." Worse, the detectors are regularly updated to keep up with ongoing changes from the companies who make AI chatbots, which means the rules about what might get your writing flagged as AI constantly shift. "It's frustrating, because there are a million ways to say the same thing in English, but which one is more human? I don't like the guessing," she says." Infinite AI slop getting churned out and people getting paid a pittance to make it sound less like AI, in order to trick other people who are actively working to not be fed the slop. What an absurd and depressing state of affairs.
- eszed 2y ago
  > actively working to not be fed the slop By using AI-powered search to summarize everything the AIs generated! I now understand the AI gold-rush. Dear God, what a dystopian future we're creating. "Information super-highway" was a more-apt metaphor than I ever thought, way back when: as we all know by now, induced demand ends up in grid-lock.
  - kombookcha 2y ago
    It's such an aggressively obnoxious way for huge swaths of infrastructure to become useless wastelands of generative nonsense that I would have been amused if I'd read it in Snow Crash. Billions of dollars and rare minerals and manpower all going towards drowning the greatest communication tool in human history in noise. It's like kessler syndrome for the internet, except we are actively spending money to make it happen. What a pointless, useless waste.
    - exe34 2y ago
      it's the vile offspring from accelerando (Charlie Stross)
cchi_co 2y ago
AI can produce text, but it still needs human intervention yet still how much time will pass before this necessity also disappears?
- guappa 2y ago
  ~∞
vouaobrasil 2y ago
A lot of people say that AI would create new jobs™. And perhaps it will. But the resulting jobs follow a general trend of technology making new jobs: the jobs themselves are more meaningless (from a human conceptual point of view) doing things that are increasingly degrading and far away from our basic instincts. And the resulting products/services seem to be reaching the anti-ideal of "optimize people for squeezing other people dry" rather than for creating any real increase in the overall good. Personally, I wish computer scientists as a group would have been wise enough to leave AI technology alone and never invent it.
- simonw 2y ago
  Presumably you mean generative AI here? Other forms of AI (machine learning etc) have been around for decades.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    Yes, generative AI. But machine learning and neural networks were the precursors to this sort of research, so I prefer to put AI into one pile, whose ultimate aim is to make a machine work more like a human.
- vundercind 2y ago
  “Computers can now perform a bunch more tasks for us.” ”How wonderful! Now that you’ve automated away a bunch of soul-crushing drudgery, we can focus on fulfilling work, like writing and making art!” “…” “… you automated away the drudgery, right?”
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    Haha. A lot of people say that. But as an artist myself, I think automating too much can actually lead to sterility in art as well. It's a matter of moderation. Complete automation leads to bad art.
    - vundercind 2y ago
meiraleal 2y ago
We fed the big tech that is screwing us for a profit. The funniest part of it is the amount of people here in HN that still come to Google, Amazon or Apple defense as they are hoping to not be laid off.
- MisterSandman 2y ago
  This article barely touched on Big Tech, and ChatGPT was not developed by Big Tech. You have a problem with late-stage capitalism, not Big Tech.
  - ksp-atlas 2y ago
    ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI, which is owned by Microsoft, a classic "Big Tech" company
fsndz 2y ago
Great article. A bit in contrast with another report from the US that found AI did not have any impact on recruitment ? (https://www.lycee.ai/blog/ai-adoption-labor-market-ny-fed-survey https://www.lycee.ai/blog/ai-adoption-labor-market-ny-fed-su...) So what is the key takeaway here ?
lupire 2y ago
> He led a team of more than 60 writers and editors, publishing blog posts and articles to promote a tech company that packages and resells data on everything from real estate to used cars. His job was to generate spam.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

50 points by gortok 2y ago

As a developer, this is kinda where I fear ending up: a glorified editor of crummy AI generated code for a pittance. At that point I'll probably check out of the industry.

digdugdirk 2y ago
That's the interesting thought though - what happens to the industry (and all the other creative industries affected) after everyone like you checks out?
- InDubioProRubio 2y ago
  Performance death by over-performance of code-generators? After that? Rejuvenation of dying systems by constantly generated new systems. Also selling retro software in containers cause it "works"..
  - InDubioProRubio 2y ago
    As in code grows organically- and thus becomes ever more capable but also ever more buggy. Then it needs to die, reasons about the produced horror, promises never again and does it again, forever and ever. Thus the state of the art was produced by the art.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- paxys 2y ago
  If companies are releasing shit products then you pick up a laptop and compete with them. That's always how things have gone in the tech industry.
  - cousin_it 2y ago
    I guess it's a lemon market problem - if other sellers are selling crap for cheap, and there's no way for buyers to verify quality before buying, then you can't make money selling quality stuff for more. Hmm, maybe "certified non-AI data" is a business idea.
    - lkramer 2y ago
      that's touched on in the article. It may be possible as a niche, but there is a whole cottage industry working to bypass the AI detectors.
cchi_co 2y ago
[dead]
carschno 2y ago
Keep in mind that companies do not necessarily aim to increase efficiency but to de-professionalize. It will be easier to find these "glorified editors" that require minimal education, than current software developers. Consequently, this will make them more replaceable and hence they will have a worse negotiation position when it comes to working conditions etc. It is an old pattern, see for instance: https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-work https://www.versobooks.com/products/688-breaking-things-at-w...
- guappa 2y ago
  I think it's harder to verify obscure code than to write it in the first place. I've seen perfectly legit looking code generated by chatgpt, except that the value of the constants were wrong. When you have to verify every single little thing, it's easier to just do it. And certainly doesn't take any less skill.
- jprete 2y ago
  Companies always want to commodify their complements, right? I wonder if there's a framing where the employees are one of the complements.
fsndz 2y ago
True. Some people argue that we are quickly moving from a creator economy to a verifier economy. AI generates a bunch of crap and knowledge workers have to verify and edit (https://www.lycee.ai/blog/the-rise-of-the-verifier-economy https://www.lycee.ai/blog/the-rise-of-the-verifier-economy)
- bheadmaster 2y ago
  > Some people argue that we are quickly moving from a creator economy to a verifier economy. I wonder if this is a natural development of economic optimization. Computability theory taught us that it is in general easier to verify that an answer is correct (P) than to come up with the answer in the first place (NP).
  - fsndz 2y ago
    This ! And I really like your analogy to computability theory. I wonder if it applies to all economic activities. My experience so far is that verification is nice for simple knowledge tasks. But for the complex ones, doing it from scratch is often better. But I guess this may change as AI systems become better and better.
    - bheadmaster 2y ago
      Of course, brute forcing a solution by verifying a massive amount of garbage is much less efficient than doing it from scratch. Verification becomes more productive than sythesis only when the probability of generated content being correct is significantly high. So I suppose, as AI gets more accurate, verification will become more productive. I'm in a peculiar position with Bing AI. My work provided me an enterprise account, so I can use it for work-related tasks. Often I find myself asking it to write a program for something I don't wanna do myself from scratch, then I just analyze it, see why it doesn't work and fix it. It has got to a point where it's much faster for me to do that, than to read the relevant documentation and figure out how to do it from scratch.
      - 2y ago
misja111 2y ago
This is not much different than being the senior developer managing an outsourced team of developers.

kombookcha 2y ago

"According to Cowart, many of the same freelance writing platforms that have AI detection software in place are simultaneously hiring people to edit content produced by chatbots. That means in some corners of the copywriting ecosystem, almost everything revolves around efforts to avoid the appearance of artificial intelligence. "They're selling AI content and paying you to fix it, and at the same time they're sending you emails about how to write like a human so you don't trigger their AI detector," Cowart says. "It's so insulting." Worse, the detectors are regularly updated to keep up with ongoing changes from the companies who make AI chatbots, which means the rules about what might get your writing flagged as AI constantly shift. "It's frustrating, because there are a million ways to say the same thing in English, but which one is more human? I don't like the guessing," she says." Infinite AI slop getting churned out and people getting paid a pittance to make it sound less like AI, in order to trick other people who are actively working to not be fed the slop. What an absurd and depressing state of affairs.

eszed 2y ago
> actively working to not be fed the slop By using AI-powered search to summarize everything the AIs generated! I now understand the AI gold-rush. Dear God, what a dystopian future we're creating. "Information super-highway" was a more-apt metaphor than I ever thought, way back when: as we all know by now, induced demand ends up in grid-lock.
- kombookcha 2y ago
  It's such an aggressively obnoxious way for huge swaths of infrastructure to become useless wastelands of generative nonsense that I would have been amused if I'd read it in Snow Crash. Billions of dollars and rare minerals and manpower all going towards drowning the greatest communication tool in human history in noise. It's like kessler syndrome for the internet, except we are actively spending money to make it happen. What a pointless, useless waste.
  - exe34 2y ago
    it's the vile offspring from accelerando (Charlie Stross)

cchi_co 2y ago

AI can produce text, but it still needs human intervention yet still how much time will pass before this necessity also disappears?

guappa 2y ago
~∞

vouaobrasil 2y ago

A lot of people say that AI would create new jobs™. And perhaps it will. But the resulting jobs follow a general trend of technology making new jobs: the jobs themselves are more meaningless (from a human conceptual point of view) doing things that are increasingly degrading and far away from our basic instincts. And the resulting products/services seem to be reaching the anti-ideal of "optimize people for squeezing other people dry" rather than for creating any real increase in the overall good. Personally, I wish computer scientists as a group would have been wise enough to leave AI technology alone and never invent it.

simonw 2y ago
Presumably you mean generative AI here? Other forms of AI (machine learning etc) have been around for decades.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Yes, generative AI. But machine learning and neural networks were the precursors to this sort of research, so I prefer to put AI into one pile, whose ultimate aim is to make a machine work more like a human.
vundercind 2y ago
“Computers can now perform a bunch more tasks for us.” ”How wonderful! Now that you’ve automated away a bunch of soul-crushing drudgery, we can focus on fulfilling work, like writing and making art!” “…” “… you automated away the drudgery, right?”
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Haha. A lot of people say that. But as an artist myself, I think automating too much can actually lead to sterility in art as well. It's a matter of moderation. Complete automation leads to bad art.
  - vundercind 2y ago

meiraleal 2y ago

We fed the big tech that is screwing us for a profit. The funniest part of it is the amount of people here in HN that still come to Google, Amazon or Apple defense as they are hoping to not be laid off.

MisterSandman 2y ago
This article barely touched on Big Tech, and ChatGPT was not developed by Big Tech. You have a problem with late-stage capitalism, not Big Tech.
- ksp-atlas 2y ago
  ChatGPT was developed by OpenAI, which is owned by Microsoft, a classic "Big Tech" company

fsndz 2y ago

Great article. A bit in contrast with another report from the US that found AI did not have any impact on recruitment ? (https://www.lycee.ai/blog/ai-adoption-labor-market-ny-fed-survey https://www.lycee.ai/blog/ai-adoption-labor-market-ny-fed-su...) So what is the key takeaway here ?

lupire 2y ago

> He led a team of more than 60 writers and editors, publishing blog posts and articles to promote a tech company that packages and resells data on everything from real estate to used cars. His job was to generate spam.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]