Prez wrote on Sep 17, 2023, 21:04:
My son is a programmer. According to him ChatGPT is good for debugging what was already coded and not much else .

Yeah, I've been coding professionally for years and ChatGPT is really helpful until it isn't. It can give you code snippets and pointers for some things and it can help you find bugs in your code. It can also produce code that doesn't make any sense and doesn't compile and when you tell it that it proposes a fix that either has nothing to do with what you wanted in the first place or produces another error. If you then point that out it will go back to its first, faulty suggestion.

Overall it's pretty helpful in coding, though. Also with other questions. Sometimes it's faster to ask ChatGPT how to do some specific thing e.g. in Linux than it is to google the answer.

Renegades Hang wrote on Sep 17, 2023, 15:59:
Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman: "All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another."

This article goes over what would happen in a "worst case" scenario where robots did everything humans do.

Let’s Hope Machines Take Our Jobs: We Want Wealth, Not Jobs
https://mises.org/library/lets-hope-machines-take-our-jobs-we-want-wealth-not-jobs

As far as wealth inequality, what most people don't understand is that over time the average American has grown wealthier. True, the average millionaire has grown even more wealthy, but that is bound to happen if both of them increase their wealth by the same percentage. In other words, if, say, every single person in the country doubled their income overnight, the gap between rich and poor would also double. For example, if the richest person earns $1,000,000 and the poorest person earns $10,000, the gap is $990,000. If both incomes are doubled, the gap enlarges to $1,980,000, which is double the original gap. Both are now much better off, but the media would sensationalize this like they always do as a bad thing. "The gap between rich and poor has doubled overnight!!! Be shocked and afraid!!!"

Why Wealth Inequality Is Better Than Ever Before
https://youtu.be/hxlunzojPcs?si=LdtfoNwaSD4JGFIb

Tell that to the millions living under the poverty line in the US, go ahead. Drive to the projects in your brand new mercedes and preach to the poor. Tell them how much better off they are than they used to be. Tell them why it's better for the very few to own most of the wealth in the world. I'll wait.

My son is a programmer. According to him ChatGPT is good for debugging what was already coded and not much else .

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Sep 17, 2023, 12:55:
I'm not sure how to even begin to recover from this, as a global species.

The 18th century French have a modest proposal...

Renegades Hang wrote on Sep 17, 2023, 15:59:

This article goes over what would happen in a "worst case" scenario where robots did everything humans do.

I wouldn't call that a "worst case" scenario even slightly. It skips ahead to essentially post-scarcity society. Even with the most optimistic realistic projections, there's a long way to go before that happens, and a lot of suffering in the mean time thanks to wealth being funnelled to the top and staying there. You put forth a silly hypothetical about $10,000 wage and $1,000,000 wages being doubled, but that's not what we're observing. The wealthy are seeing larger increases in wealth by percentage, while the low wage earners are seeing little to no growth.

Icewind wrote on Sep 17, 2023, 14:27:
That article is absolutely legendary levels of cope.

It's just wired.com

AI may just be a tool for increasing programmer productivity at the moment, but seeing the progress that is being made and the money being poured into training and researching these models, it will not be long until many coding jobs will be better done by AI.

Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman: "All of the progress that the US has made over the last couple of centuries has come from unemployment. It has come from figuring out how to produce more goods with fewer workers, thereby releasing labor to be more productive in other areas. It has never come about through permanent unemployment, but temporary unemployment, in the process of shifting people from one area to another."

This article goes over what would happen in a "worst case" scenario where robots did everything humans do.

Let’s Hope Machines Take Our Jobs: We Want Wealth, Not Jobs
https://mises.org/library/lets-hope-machines-take-our-jobs-we-want-wealth-not-jobs

As far as wealth inequality, what most people don't understand is that over time the average American has grown wealthier. True, the average millionaire has grown even more wealthy, but that is bound to happen if both of them increase their wealth by the same percentage. In other words, if, say, every single person in the country doubled their income overnight, the gap between rich and poor would also double. For example, if the richest person earns $1,000,000 and the poorest person earns $10,000, the gap is $990,000. If both incomes are doubled, the gap enlarges to $1,980,000, which is double the original gap. Both are now much better off, but the media would sensationalize this like they always do as a bad thing. "The gap between rich and poor has doubled overnight!!! Be shocked and afraid!!!"

Why Wealth Inequality Is Better Than Ever Before
https://youtu.be/hxlunzojPcs?si=LdtfoNwaSD4JGFIb

That article is absolutely legendary levels of cope.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Some version of ChatGPT is indeed coming for every job, eventually. Except for the most menial of physical labor, that'll be humans until robots become way cheaper.

In the short term, ChatGPT just has to be good enough to convince CEOs/CFOs to fire 90%of their workforce, and they barely need any help leaning towards that.

One more horseman of the apocalypse, increased automation. Ideally, increased automation should have led to a paradise on earth; obviously the reality has fallen far short of that, with every increase in productivity leading to sharper wealth inequalities. I'm not sure how to even begin to recover from this, as a global species.