I came across this article in another Lemmy community that dislikes AI. I’m reposting instead of cross posting so that we could have a conversation about how “work” might be changing with advancements in technology.
The headline is clickbaity because Altman was referring to how farmers who lived decades ago might perceive that the work “you and I do today” (including Altman himself), doesn’t look like work.
The fact is that most of us work far abstracted from human survival by many levels. Very few of us are farming, building shelters, protecting our families from wildlife, or doing the back breaking labor jobs that humans were forced to do generations ago.
In my first job, which was IT support, the concept was not lost on me that all day long I pushed buttons to make computers beep in more friendly ways. There was no physical result to see, no produce to harvest, no pile of wood being transitioned from a natural to a chopped state, nothing tangible to step back and enjoy at the end of the day.
Bankers, fashion designers, artists, video game testers, software developers and countless other professions experience something quite similar. Yet, all of these jobs do in some way add value to the human experience.
As humanity’s core needs have been met with technology requiring fewer human inputs, our focus has been able to shift to creating value in less tangible, but perhaps not less meaningful ways. This has created a more dynamic and rich life experience than any of those previous farming generations could have imagined. So while it doesn’t seem like the work those farmers were accustomed to, humanity has been able to shift its attention to other types of work for the benefit of many.
I postulate that AI - as we know it now - is merely another technological tool that will allow new layers of abstraction. At one time bookkeepers had to write in books, now software automatically encodes accounting transactions as they’re made. At one time software developers might spend days setting up the framework of a new project, and now an LLM can do the bulk of the work in minutes.
These days we have fewer bookkeepers - most companies don’t need armies of clerks anymore. But now we have more data analysts who work to understand the information and make important decisions. In the future we may need fewer software coders, and in turn, there will be many more software projects that seek to solve new problems in new ways.
How do I know this? I think history shows us that innovations in technology always bring new problems to be solved. There is an endless reservoir of challenges to be worked on that previous generations didn’t have time to think about. We are going to free minds from tasks that can be automated, and many of those minds will move on to the next level of abstraction.
At the end of the day, I suspect we humans are biologically wired with a deep desire to output rewarding and meaningful work, and much of the results of our abstracted work is hard to see and touch. Perhaps this is why I enjoy mowing my lawn so much, no matter how advanced robotic lawn mowing machines become.
Why do people still listen to this grifter piece of shit? I really don’t get it.
I am starting to dislike Altman spam more than Elmo spam.
Regarding the philosophical points, there is some truth to the arguments, but one thing is absolutely certain (you can have zero knowledge of “AI” services to know that), you can’t trust Americans in such matters.
I agree with the sentiment, as bad as it feels to agree with Altman about anything.
I’m working as a software developer, working on the backend of the website/loyalty app of some large retailer.
My job is entirely useless. I mean, I’m doing a decent job keeping the show running, but (a) management shifts priorities all the time and about 2/3 of all the “super urgent” things I work on get cancelled before then get released and (b) if our whole department would instantly disappear and the app and webside would just be gone, nobody would care. Like, literally. We have an app and a website because everyone has to have one, not because there’s a real benefit to anyone.
The same is true for most of the jobs I worked in, and about most jobs in large corporations.
So if AI could somehow replace all these jobs (which it can’t), nothing of value would be lost, apart from the fact that our society requires everyone to have a job, bullshit or not. And these bullshit jobs even tend to be the better-paid ones.
So AI doing the bullshit jobs isn’t the problem, but people having to do bullshit jobs to get paid is.
If we all get a really good universal basic income or something, I don’t think most people would mind that they don’t have to go warm a seat in an office anymore. But since we don’t and we likely won’t in the future, losing a job is a real problem, which makes Altman’s comment extremely insensitive.
The same is true for most of the jobs I worked in, and about most jobs in large corporations.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
My job started as a relatively BS job. Basically, the company I work for makes physical things, and the people who use those physical things need to create reports to keep the regulators happy. So my first couple years on the job was improving the report generation app, which was kind of useful since it saved people an hour or two a week in producing reports. But the main reason we had this app in the first place was because our competitors had one, and the company needed a digital product to point to in order to sell customers (who didn’t use the app, someone a few layers down did) on it. Basically, my job existed to check a box.
However, my department went above and beyond and created tools to optimize our customers’ businesses. We went past reporting and built simulations related to reporting, but that brought actual value. They could reduce or increase use of our product based on actual numbers, and that change would increase their profitability (more widgets produced per dollar spent). When the company did a round of cost cutting, they took a look at our department ready to axe us, but instead increased our funding when they saw the potential of our simulations, and now we’re making using the app standard for all of our on-staff consultants and front-and-center for all new customer acquisitions (i.e. not just reporting, but showcasing our app as central to the customer’s business).
All that has happened over the last year or so, so I guess we’ll see if that actually increases customer retention and acquisition. My point is that my job transitioned from something mostly useless (glorified PDF generator) to something that actually provides value to the business and likely reduces costs downstream (that’s about 3 steps away from the retail store, but it could help cut prices a few percent on certain products while improving profits for us and our customers).
If we all get a really good universal basic income or something
I disagree with your assertion that many jobs exist because people need jobs. I think jobs exist because even “BS” job create value. If there was a labor surplus today, jobs would be created the lower cost of labor acquisition makes certain products profitable that wouldn’t otherwise be.
That said, I am 100% a fan of something like UBI, though I personally would make it based on income (i.e. a Negative Income Tax, so only those under $X get the benefit), but that’s mostly to make the dollar amount of that program less scary. For example, there are ~130M households in the US (current pop is 342M, or about 2.6 people per household). The poverty line is $32,150 for a family, and sending that out as UBI would cost ~4.1T, which is almost as much as the current US budget. If we instead brought everyone to the poverty line through something like NIT, that’s only ~168B, or about 4% of the current budget.
Regardless of the approach, I think ensuring everyone is between the poverty line (i.e. unemployed people) and a living wage (i.e. minimum wage people) is a good idea for a few reasons:
- allows you to quit your BS job and not be screwed - puts pressure on employers at low-paying jobs to provide a better work experience and pay
- allows us to distribute other benefits in dollars instead of services - this book opened my eyes to how much poor people want cash, not benefits; it’s easier to move if you have $1k/month in rent allowance than stuck in your section 8 (government assisted) housing
- could eliminate the federal minimum wage - if employers aren’t paying well, people won’t take the job because they’d rather take the gov’t handout, so I’d consider the UBI/NIT to be the minimum wage instead
- encourages entrepreneurs to start businesses - my main reason for not starting a business in worries about not being able to cover my basic needs; UBI/NIT covers that, so I probably would have started a few small businesses if I had that as a fallback
- can replace Social Security (or other gov’t pension plan), since retirees can treat UBI/NIT as their pension, and not be restricted to a specific age to take it (benefits would be lower, but very predictable)
Giving people a backup plan encourages people to take more risks, which should result in more value across the economy.
Agreed. His comments are so bizarrely stupid on so many levels.
They’re not just “wrong”: they’re half-right-half-wrong. And the half that is wrong is idiotic in the extreme, while the half that is right casually acknowledges a civilizational crisis like someone watching their neighbors screaming in a house fire while sipping a cup of coffee.
Like this farmer analogy: the farmers were right! Their way of life and all that mattered to them was largely exterminated by these changes, and we’re living in their worst nightmare! And he even goes so far as acknowledging this, and acknowledging that we’ll likely experience the same thing. We’re all basically cart horses at the dawn of the automobile, and we might actually hate where this is going. But… It’ll probably be great.
He just has a hunch that even though all evidence suggests that this will lead to the opposite of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, for some reason his brain can’t shake the sense that it’s going to be good anyway. I mean, it has to be, otherwise that would make him a monster! And that simply can’t be the case. So there you have it.
It’ll be
terriblegreat.
Sam, I say this will all my heart…
Fuck you very kindly. I’m pretty sure what you do is not “a real job” and should be replaced by AI.
This was a great comment to the article. You have true expression in your words, my friend. It was a joy reading.
If Sam got wiped out he would even be a real man anyway
Can’t AI replace Sam Altman?
Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind.
– The Orange Catholic Bible
Also, that pompous chucklefuck can go fuck himself. There are people who could barely feed themselves at less than a couple dollars per day.
read the next sentence after that.
At one time software developers might spend days setting up the framework of a new project, and now an LLM can do the bulk of the work in minutes.
No and no. Have you ever coded anything?
Yeah, I have never spent “days” setting anything up. Anyone who can’t do it without spending “days” struggling with it is not reading the documentation.
You guys are getting documentation?
Well, if I’m not, then neither is an LLM.
But for most projects built with modern tooling, the documentation is fine, and they mostly have simple CLIs for scaffolding a new application.
I mean if you use the code base you’re working in as context it’ll probably learn the code base faster than you will, although I’m not saying that’s a good strategy, I’d never personally do that
The thing is, it really won’t. The context window isn’t large enough, especially for a decently-sized application, and that seems to be a fundamental limitation. Make the context window too large, and the LLM gets massively offtrack very easily, because there’s too much in it to distract it.
And LLMs don’t remember anything. The next time you interact with it and put the whole codebase into its context window again, it won’t know what it did before, even if the last session was ten minutes ago. That’s why they so frequently create bloat.
Sometimes documentation is inconsistent.
Ever work in an enterprise environment? Sometimes a single talented developer cannot overcome the calcification of hundreds of people over several decades who care more about the optics of work than actual work. Documentation cannot help if its non-existent/20 years old. Documentation cannot make teams that don’t believe in automation, adopt Docker.
Not that I expect Sam Altman to understand what it’s like working in a dumpster fire company, the only job he’s ever held is to pour gasoline.
Dumpster fire companies are the ones he’s targeting because they’re the mostly likely to look for quick and cheap ways to fix the symptoms of their problems, and most likely to want to replace their employees with automations.
Have you ever built anything with your hands that mattered?
I know this was aimed at someone else. But my response is “Every day.” What is your follow-up question?
Yes. How is it relevant to moderne SWE practices?
OP wrote 10 paragraphs and your head is still in devland.
If your argument attacks my credibility, that’s fine, you don’t know me. We can find cases where developers use the technology and cases where they refuse.
Do you have anything substantive to add to the discussion about whether AI LLMs are anything more than just a tool that allows workers to further abstract, advancing all of the professions it can touch towards any of: better / faster / cheaper / easier?
I’ve got something to add: in every practical application AI have increased liabilities and created vastly inferior product, so they’re not more than just a tool that allows workers to further abstract because they are less than that. This in addition to the fact that AI companies can’t turn a profit, so it’s not better, not faster, not cheaper, but but it is certainly easier (to do a shit job).
Yeah, I’ve got something to add. The ruling class will use LLMs as a tool to lay off tens of thousands of workers to consolidate more power and wealth at the top.
LLMs also advance no profession at all while it can still hallucinate and be manipulated by it’s owners, producing more junk that requires a skilled worker to fix. Even my coworkers have said “if I have to fix everything it gives me, why didn’t I just do it myself?”
LLMs also have dire consequences outside the context of labor. Because of how easy they are to manipulate, they can be used to manufacture consent and warp public consciousness around their owners’ ideals.
LLMs are also a massive financial bubble, ready to pop and send us into a recession. Nvidia is shoveling money into companies so they can shovel it back into Nvidia.
Would you like me to continue on about the climate?
You seem to be taking this a bit personally…
Cool, know what job could easily be wiped out? Management. Sam Altman is a manager.
Therefore, Sam Altman doesn’t do real work. Fuck you, asshole.
I have a feeling people are gonna remember that when his job gets wiped out.
That’s rich coming from the leader in the field of manufacturing demand out of whole cloth.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this since chatgpt dropped and I agree with Sam here despite the article trying to rage bait people. We simply shouldn’t protect the job market from the point of view of identity or status. We should keep an open mind of jobs and work culture could look like in the future.
Unfortunately this issue is impossible to discuss without conflating it with general economics and wealth imbalance so we’ll never have an adult discussion here. We can actually have both - review/kill/create new jobs and work cultures and address wealth imbalance but not in some single silver bullet solution.
this issue is impossible to discuss without conflating it with general economics and wealth imbalance
It’s not conflating, the two issues are inextricably linked.
General economics and wealth imbalance can be addressed with or without the chaos of AI disrupting the job market. The problem is: chaos acts to drive wealth imbalance faster, so any change like AI in the jobs market is just shaking things up and letting more people fall through the cracks faster.
Everything is “linked” - your point is moot.
The real thing most people are trying to hold onto is stability, because chaos benefits the powerful. AI is just the latest agent of chaos, from their perspectives.
Weird take.
Instead of calling it chaos, call it losing their jobs - being forced to move hundreds of miles if they want to earn decent money again…
They’re not real until your bullshit factory falls apart without them, fucktard
I was at the Canton Fair last week which is a trade show in China where manufacturers display some of their latest technology.
There was a robotics display all where they are showing off how lots of factories, kitchens, another labor-based jobs can be automated with technology.
This doesn’t really have a lot to do with AI or LLMs, but the field of robotics is advancing fast and a lot of basic work that humans had to do in the past won’t be needed as much in the future.
Yeah… But rich people don’t want to eat food prepared cheaply and efficiently by robots. They want 10k a plate bullshit, not peasant food. They will, however, gladly use robots for manual labor like construction and soldiering
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