3 ms·

what does "huge democratization of work" even mean? what world do you people live in? the current global unemployment rate on my planet is around 5% so that s

what does "huge democratization of work" even mean? what world do you people live in? the current global unemployment rate on my planet is around 5% so that seems pretty democratised already?

abletonlive 1y ago
What I mean by that is that you have even more power to start your own company or use LLMs to reduce the friction of doing something yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it for you. Just as the internet was a democratization of information, llms are a democratization of output. That may be in terms of production or art. There is clearly a lower barrier for achieving both now compared to pre-llm. If you can't see this then you don't just have your head stuck in the sand, you have it severed and blasted into another reality. The reason why you reacted in such a way is again, a lack of imagination. To you, "work" means "employment" and a means to a paycheck. But work is more than that. It is the output that matters, and whether that output benefits you or your employer is up to you. You now have more leverage than ever for making it benefit you because you're not paying that much time/money to ask an LLM to do it for you. Pre-llm, most for-hire work was only accessible to companies with a much bigger bank account than yours. There is an ungodly amount of white collar workers maintaining spreadsheets and doing bullshit jobs that LLMs can do just fine. And that's not to say all of those jobs have completely useless output, it's just that the amount of bodies it takes to produce that output is unreasonable. We are just getting started getting rid of them. But the best part of it is that you can do all of those bullshit jobs with an LLM for whatever idea you have in your pocket. For example, I don't need an army of junior engineers to write all my boilerplate for me. I might have a protege if I am looking to actually mentor someone and hire them for that reason, but I can easily also just use LLMs to make boilerplate and write unit tests for me at the same time. Previously I would have had to have 1 million dollars sitting around to fund the amount of output that I am able to produce with a $20 subscription to an LLM service. The junior engineer can also do this too, albeit in most cases less effectively. That's democratization of work. In your "5% unemployment" world you have many more gatekeepers and financial barriers.
- blibble 1y ago
  > What I mean by that is that you have even more power to start your own company or use LLMs to reduce the friction of doing something yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it for you. > Previously I would have had to have 1 million dollars sitting around to fund the amount of output that I am able to produce with a $20 subscription to an LLM service. this sounds like the death of employment and the start of plutocracy not what I would call "democratisation"
  - abletonlive 1y ago
    > plutocracy Well, I've said enough about cynicism here so not much else I can offer you. Good luck with that! Didn't realize everybody loved being an employee so much
    - blibble 1y ago
      not everyone is capable of starting a business so, employee or destitute? tough choice
      - abletonlive 1y ago
        I spent a lot of time arguing the barrier to entry for starting one is lower than ever. But if your only options are employee or being destitute, I will again point right to -> cynicism.
- hn_acc1 1y ago
  Just curious what area you work in? Python or some kind of web service / Jscript? I'm sure the LLMs are reasonably good for that - or for updating .csv files (you mention spreadsheets). I write code to drive hardware, in an unusual programming style. The company pays for Augment (which is now based on o4, which is supposed to be really good?!?). It's great at me typing: print_debug( at which point it often guesses right as to which local variables or parameters I want to debug - but not always. And it can often get the loop iteration part correct if I need to, for example, loop through a vector. The couple of times I asked it to write a unit test? Sure, it got a the basic function call / lambda setup correct, but the test itself was useless. And a bunch of times, it brings back code I was experimenting with 3 months ago and never kept / committed, just because I'm at the same spot in the same file.. I do believe that some people are having reasonable outcomes, but it's not "out of the box" - and it's faster for me to write the code I need to write than to try 25 different prompt variations.
tdeck 1y ago
I've noticed that when people use the term "democratization" in business speak, it makes sense to replace it with "commodification" 99% of the time.

what does "huge democratization of work" even mean? what world do you people live in? the current global unemployment rate on my planet is around 5% so that seems pretty democratised already?

abletonlive 1y ago

What I mean by that is that you have even more power to start your own company or use LLMs to reduce the friction of doing something yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it for you. Just as the internet was a democratization of information, llms are a democratization of output. That may be in terms of production or art. There is clearly a lower barrier for achieving both now compared to pre-llm. If you can't see this then you don't just have your head stuck in the sand, you have it severed and blasted into another reality. The reason why you reacted in such a way is again, a lack of imagination. To you, "work" means "employment" and a means to a paycheck. But work is more than that. It is the output that matters, and whether that output benefits you or your employer is up to you. You now have more leverage than ever for making it benefit you because you're not paying that much time/money to ask an LLM to do it for you. Pre-llm, most for-hire work was only accessible to companies with a much bigger bank account than yours. There is an ungodly amount of white collar workers maintaining spreadsheets and doing bullshit jobs that LLMs can do just fine. And that's not to say all of those jobs have completely useless output, it's just that the amount of bodies it takes to produce that output is unreasonable. We are just getting started getting rid of them. But the best part of it is that you can do all of those bullshit jobs with an LLM for whatever idea you have in your pocket. For example, I don't need an army of junior engineers to write all my boilerplate for me. I might have a protege if I am looking to actually mentor someone and hire them for that reason, but I can easily also just use LLMs to make boilerplate and write unit tests for me at the same time. Previously I would have had to have 1 million dollars sitting around to fund the amount of output that I am able to produce with a $20 subscription to an LLM service. The junior engineer can also do this too, albeit in most cases less effectively. That's democratization of work. In your "5% unemployment" world you have many more gatekeepers and financial barriers.

blibble 1y ago
> What I mean by that is that you have even more power to start your own company or use LLMs to reduce the friction of doing something yourself instead of hiring someone else to do it for you. > Previously I would have had to have 1 million dollars sitting around to fund the amount of output that I am able to produce with a $20 subscription to an LLM service. this sounds like the death of employment and the start of plutocracy not what I would call "democratisation"
- abletonlive 1y ago
  > plutocracy Well, I've said enough about cynicism here so not much else I can offer you. Good luck with that! Didn't realize everybody loved being an employee so much
  - blibble 1y ago
    not everyone is capable of starting a business so, employee or destitute? tough choice
    - abletonlive 1y ago
      I spent a lot of time arguing the barrier to entry for starting one is lower than ever. But if your only options are employee or being destitute, I will again point right to -> cynicism.
hn_acc1 1y ago
Just curious what area you work in? Python or some kind of web service / Jscript? I'm sure the LLMs are reasonably good for that - or for updating .csv files (you mention spreadsheets). I write code to drive hardware, in an unusual programming style. The company pays for Augment (which is now based on o4, which is supposed to be really good?!?). It's great at me typing: print_debug( at which point it often guesses right as to which local variables or parameters I want to debug - but not always. And it can often get the loop iteration part correct if I need to, for example, loop through a vector. The couple of times I asked it to write a unit test? Sure, it got a the basic function call / lambda setup correct, but the test itself was useless. And a bunch of times, it brings back code I was experimenting with 3 months ago and never kept / committed, just because I'm at the same spot in the same file.. I do believe that some people are having reasonable outcomes, but it's not "out of the box" - and it's faster for me to write the code I need to write than to try 25 different prompt variations.

tdeck 1y ago

I've noticed that when people use the term "democratization" in business speak, it makes sense to replace it with "commodification" 99% of the time.