ChatGPT lies then gaslights reporter with fake transcript

[Blue]

Where's the laugh/cry reaction when I need one, because I've quite literally seen this happen, and we just lost another team to it.

Progress folks.

Robot Garbage Men? Robot Garbage Trucks? 3D Printed Homes?

Robot Care Home Workers? Robot Farmers?

To do what? Make money (how?) from and for whom?

We are not going to live in the world of Star Trek, wake up and read the news. We are not going to get our own Vineyard in France like Picard.

What are your kids going to be doing? Grandkids?

"Vibe Coding" for what and whom?

Man, these new-fangled automobiles will put all the buggy whip salesmen out of business!

Yes, progress happens. Old jobs get phased out or get done more efficiently. We used to spend all of our waking hours getting enough calories to survive. Agriculture was a huge disruption to that way of life. How we do agriculture now produces thousands of times more edible calories per man-hour than it did back then, but we've found new ways to fill our time.

Part of the current issue is an assumption that people should be working 40 hours a week. Back when it was every waking hour. Less than a hundred years ago it was 6 days a week, often 10-14 hour days. In the US, Henry Ford was the one who instituted the 40 hour week back in 1926, because his factory was more efficient. It wasn't passed into law into 1940 - 65 years ago. Labor Unions fought hard for that.

And today, in many industries due to improved tools, those same workers are producing many multiples of the work they would have produced back in the 1940s. Maybe we need to look at "well, if producing this much work is worth getting paid X, then you should get paid X even if now it only takes you 10 hours to do it". That's not something that'll be given by the business owners, though some countries like France have less than 40 hour weeks with strong legal safeguards.

So don't look at tools and cry they are taking jobs, look at those who squeeze so much work from the people they have employed while only sharing the merest pittance back compared to the work they produce.

History is full of "technical" revolutions, from crop rotation to the loom and onward. History has taught us there will always be a next thing.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Man, these new-fangled automobiles will put all the buggy whip salesmen out of business!

Except, in this case, nearly everyone -- including people in the tech industry -- are the buggy whip salesmen. The number of jobs that won't be affected are miniscule, because everyone wildly overestimates how much management and ownership values their human contributions.

Corporate America isn't going to say "oh, you can stick around, and we'll pay you the same money you made when you worked 40 hours a week while we have you work 10." They will cut you loose.

 

[Scribe]

Man, these new-fangled automobiles will put all the buggy whip salesmen out of business!

I'm really not up for this one again.

The rest of your post makes some points, but let me know when you set up the next round of the French Revolution across the entire software industry, instead of us oh...firing people because we can pay someone in another country a fraction to do that work.

Do we honestly think that the world is going to go down to what, a 3 day work week? My son works with some people who have that...in one of their jobs. They have to of course pick up another job, because a 3 day work week doesnt quite pay the bills.

Are we going to see UBI? Not in my life time. Maybe my grandkids, if my son ends up having kids. I know if I was him, I wouldnt be considering it, but well, I'm sure thats not a problem either right? The stagnating population with seniors working well past retirement? No I'm sure its fine, and AI will save us.

"Oh the world will have to adjust." right yeah, I'm sure thats going to work out just fine.

 

[Scribe]

Maybe we need to look at "well, if producing this much work is worth getting paid X, then you should get paid X even if now it only takes you 10 hours to do it".

I mean jeeze man, yeah, it would also be nice if I got my Vineyard.

Instead, its 'well, if you can produce this much with a chatbot, but we pay you a north american wage...why dont I just hire this guy in India instead?'

Like I assume you have been in software. I assume you have seen outsourcing? Its been around my entire career.

We are not going to get paid to do less actual work. The effort will be offloaded to the lowest bidder, because thats how companies work, have always worked.

How are Unions doing outside of the EU? Hows your pension looking? I mean we all have pensions right? Like they had in the old days? Right?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How are Unions doing outside of the EU? Hows your pension looking? I mean we all have pensions right? Like they had in the old days? Right?

In the US, they're up in public sentiment and numbers since the pandemic -- my shop unionized -- but still at close to historic low levels.

 

[Scribe]

In the US, they're up in public sentiment and numbers since the pandemic -- my shop unionized -- but still at close to historic low levels.

Hope it works out for you. Honestly.

We just had a team from a very employee friendly EU nation replaced. It took longer due to the laws there, but it still happened.

Don't get me wrong @Blue I would love a 3 day work week on my lake front property...but I am not holding my breath.

I don't have a pension outside what Canada currently will give everyone at 65.

I need the market to provide my freedom.

 

[inf0squit0]

I also think, though, that there is an opportunity for human-created content to stand out from the slop. People will seek that out, and seek out the creators/brands that they trust. That 'real content' will have value just for being 'real'. But we (creators) have to make sure we are better than the slop.

100% agree from a creative standpoint. I take the existence of "AI slop" as a term as evidence that some, if not all, people understand the difference. Actual creative work is more intentional than anything we've seen from a LLM and it seems like a non-insignificant amount of people are developing an intuition for determining what is intentional human creative work and what is regurgitated and reblended AI "content".

I'm not even sure these things are mutually exclusive - I think one plausible outcome of all of this is that quality, human-driven creative brands will find an audience while the 'open source' Internet is consumed by slop made increasingly from other slop.

My personal take is that if all of this AI/LLM stuff has a silver lining, it is that it may serve to accelerate the decay of bland, "please all of the people all of the time" content and create room for high-depth, high-effort creative work to be valued a bit more in the long run. Doubly so if the only cheap way to train the next model is from the slop the previous generation of models produced and flooded public discourse with. Damage will be done in the meantime but I hold out hope that when the smoke clears, the creatives who put in the work to be better than the slop will succeed in carving out a niche for themselves.

 

[trappedslider]

We are not going to live in the world of Star Trek, wake up and read the news. We are not going to get our own Vineyard in France like Picard.

I've always wondered how that Vineyard managed to make it past World War 3.

 

[Clint_L]

However, it does show why this technology is worthless; bullsh!t text predictors are not useful and makes everything worse, and just decreases the amount of knowledge in the world.

Most work-related writing is not creative, nor about creating new knowledge. Predictive text is highly useful in a large number of applications. Which is why, for example, law firms have been using it for some years to produce most of their rote paperwork. It also has plenty of intriguing creative applications in the hands of a skilled human. For example, I recently had Notebook LM do a podcast of a study guide that I created, which my students rated as both useful and entertaining; I thought it was a very accurate discussion of my ideas.

I also use a LM to assist in D&D prep all the time; it greatly speeds up my work because a fair amount of session prep is fairly rote.

So predictive LMs are useful in all kinds of contexts. That doesn’t mean the OP doesn’t point to a serious issue, but used correctly it is an extremely powerful tool that increases productivity.

 

[Scribe]

I've always wondered how that Vineyard managed to make it past World War 3.

Same way the world is improved by AI.

Magic.