Are you a cutting edge research scientist or something? Everyone I know works in the same domain every day. The problems are the same. People aren't solving brand new problems to humanity every day. We make budgets and look at ticket counts. Roll out patches. Replace hardware. Upgrade software packages. Make a new dashboard to track a project. I guess if every day is a completely novel thing for you, ok. I feel like the goalposts have moved to an absolutely ridiculous place. Oh no, I won't have a bunch of random error log numbers memorized anymore? Who gives a shit. I just want to afford a place to live so I can play my guitar and make something good for dinner. Maybe I'm just old, but I don't see why the average person needs to be a fuckin genius problem solver.
I think that’s fine, but 1) that mentality leaves you extremely vulnerable to being disrupted by LLMs and 2) IMO, if you are solving the same problems every day it means you are not making progress on solving the root causes of those problems. What you are describing is toil, not knowledge work
I don't think it matters much what kind of problem it is. If it is challenging enough to benefit from assistance and you end up playing a minor role in the solution, it seems like you are putting yourself in the worst position possible. You lose your edge for functioning within the problem space and it raises the question why you are even in the loop at all. If its job security you want, transforming your role into LLM babysitter seems like the worst way to ensure it.
It's an adversarial economy. Using a LLM at work doesn't mean the work is challenging. A lot of jobs are "bullshit jobs". People are using LLMs because it gives them back time. If they don't use it their colleague will and make them look bad.
Company might fire you tomorrow. Fundamentally if a LLM can do the job it's not just employees at risk, it is also the company. There is a lot of symmetry actually with how companies delegate to employees to how employees delegate to LLMs. You can follow the logic to conclude a lot of companies are then bullshit companies. This is not a problem for the individual to solve. Your job at work is akin to the company's - earn the best return while you still can. Wasting your time for the essentially the same output at a slower pace is a bad return.
When people get laid off en masse this incentive structure will have to be altered. But telling an individual to ignore their basic economic incentives until then is unlikely to work.
I have also come to the conclusion independently that a lot of companies are bullshit companies, maybe that is closer to the core issue. For the individuals who do have some choice in the matter, I think it is important to hold on to their skills by continuing to use them. It sucks that our work culture is so competitive, but from that angle I believe they will stand out eventually as more competent.
Most companies are real, it's just that a good fraction of the work is mostly unnecessary. Partially because of the overhead of doing business activities that is unneeded most of the time, partly because we don't know what work will be useful, and partly for silly social reasons
I keep coming back to the idea that all the upheaval combined with all the new tools at our disposal will empower and motivate people to start businesses that challenge the status quo. I've lived long enough to see that play out at scale, it is basically how we got Google. That might not sound encouraging, but Google was once a really inspiring company and one of the best places to work.
Ok let's make math illegal and burn down the data centers I guess. Idk what to tell you, but we will adapt and new roles will be created. Just like every single tool and piece of tech that came before. LLM manager? Fine.
The parent said American corporations. No one with any sense wants a dependency critical to their state or private company sitting under the direct control of America any more.
I think it's intellectually dishonest to dismiss the absolute accumulation of human's knowledge under very specific brands for profitability using false equivalencies. When I build something using chatGPT, especially if I was unable to build it before, I arrive at a result that I could have previously arrived with "hard work" by skipping the "hard work" part.
Now, many will argue that you wouldn't have poured in time and energy in that endeavour anyways, so it's fine. But the crucial part missing here is the effort. We're about to witness the side effects of societal-wide reliance on LLM's, the same way we're still paying the price for the social media boom, misinformation, propaganda, echo-chambers and algorithmic bubbles.
Notice that none of the above actually invented misinformation, etc. they just magnified an existing problem. LLM's magnify the need to "get it done, fast" but I don't see the engineering excellence everyone promised me that I'll see at any level.
In the US, much of the woods are owned by corporations too. Those that aren't are, in theory, owned by the public, but the oligarchs work hard to hollow that out so that practically public lands are owned by them too.
>Just like every single tool and piece of tech that came before.
The thing about relying on the past to predict the future is that works ... until it doesn't.
We've yet to see a technology with as diverse utility as LLMs. What happens when not just the tech sector starts downsizing, but the whole white collar workforce?
In the past, one such "new role" was that of slave. In fact, we expect slavery is <10,000 years old! Yes, new roles will be created. But there's nothing to say that they'll be pleasant for us to take on.
It doesn't seem like you're responding to my post, more to the quote? But my point isn't that everybody should be a genius problem solver, although that would help, while being stuck in the same routine doesn't.
My point is, if you delegate your job to AI, and it works, then 1/ you don't know the result of the work in more detail than any other person, and 2/ the people you're reporting to can probably write a prompt as good as yours, if not better.
Which means: you've made yourself dispensable. Nothing very good for dinner; no nice place to live. But lots of time to practice guitar I guess.
>Who gives a shit. I just want to afford a place to live so I can play my guitar and make something good for dinner. Maybe I'm just old, but I don't see why the average person needs to be a fuckin genius problem solver.
I enjoy programming and want to be engaged for the 40 hours a week where I sell my labor.
I also care about my profession and technology, and I don't want the world to become an idiocracy where nobody understands any of the technology we're overly depedent upon.
