Don't Worry About A.I. Taking Over...

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It gives back fantastic results, cutting down the time that I would have spent doing this sort of thing significantly. If you haven’t tried, you should play around with ChatGPT, it’s literally mind blowing when you can see what it can do.

Perhaps it does save some time; don't know, don't really care, but I'll take your word for it. If you add up the time you spent composing and posing the question to the program, and then added in the time you would inevitably spend "checking its work", so to speak...how much time has been saved?

You do check its work...don't you?

If the continued success of my business or even my actual physical health were at stake, you can't possibly suggest that I would simply take its answers at face value without checking them myself, and likely editing them for my own purposes. I mean, here in this thread we are discussing the ways in which these programs or "AI"s" can produce incorrect responses to what are essentially simple Yes/No questions, based upon how we ask them...but the correct answer to a Yes/No question should not depend upon the wording of the question.

I always monitored the work of apprentices assigned to me when I was in the work force, for safety reasons and because it was my job to do so. In the final analysis, they were not to be held accountable for any substandard work they produced because ultimately I was responsible for what they did or did not learn and for the quality of the work they produced.

Since I was only ever responsible for one or two appies at a time, I often found that the work progressed more slowly than it would have if I had done all of it myself. Teaching them was part of the job, yes, but if the only goal had been to produce finished work, I was better off alone.

To my technoplegic brain, even the staunchest supporters of these talking air fresheners haven't made it sound as though they are much better than the apprentices in this analogy. If you are the sort of person who loves toys and gadgets, and are willing to trust that they work as advertised, they sound cool. If you have come, through experience, to expect that very few of the "latest and greatest" items are actually worth a pinch of s**t...they don't.
 
You do check its work...don't you?

Of course - but it’s the difference between reading over an email for tone and word choice and drafting one from scratch. It does a pretty good and quick job of that sort of thing.

Another use is that you can provide it with a full document and ask it to break it down into major themes. You could paste your firm’s annual report, for example, and have it come up with a concise assessment of the results. You could even ask it to break those results down into a 25 minute presentation, and offer suggestions on how many PowerPoint slides should be used, what wording should be on each slide, and offer suggested images for each slide.

This would take a day’s worth of presentation prep and writing and turn it into ~an hour task. Of course, you need to be aware of the firm’s situation in the first place - you’d still have to read the annual report to make sure that the information is being broadly presented in an appropriate way, but it’s been a massive time save.
 
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Of course - but it’s the difference between reading over an email for tone and word choice and drafting one from scratch. It does a pretty good and quick job of that sort of thing.

This would take a day’s worth of presentation prep and writing and turn it into ~an hour task...it’s been a massive time save.

Taking this at face value, and looking at the ever-increasing pace of technological development...I can't help but think that you are trapped in what may be a laughably-short "window of opportunity"...one that spans the time between not having an AI to do any of this work for you...and having one that does it so well that you are no longer needed! :)

To me, that's one of the big problems with tech; it continually moves us towards a world where many or most jobs are going to be done better and faster and cheaper by AI, and of course we hear all about how this will "free up" humanity to live better and more fulfilling lives. Cue Gene Roddenberry's ghost. It might even be true if things work out favourably; those future people may...may...reap those rewards. But, as always, there will be that awkward phase where people who had the jobs yesterday...and still need them tomorrow...will lose them today.

I use the term "awkward" to describe its overall effect on human society; but for those actually caught in that trap...it's devastating.

This debate is reminding me of a bank teller, probably 20 years ago, who smiled warmly while asking if I realized that the simple task I had waited in line for her to do for me could have been handled, without waiting, if I had gone to the ATM. My father was with me at the time; he also smiled warmly and asked her if she realized that if we all went to the ATM...then most of the bank tellers would be unnecessary and quickly dispensed with.

The look on her face was priceless.
 
Taking this at face value, and looking at the ever-increasing pace of technological development...I can't help but think that you are trapped in what may be a laughably-short "window of opportunity"...one that spans the time between not having an AI to do any of this work for you...and having one that does it so well that you are no longer needed! :)

You are absolutely correct. AI is going to be to certain types of jobs in our “knowledge and service economy” what the coming of the automobile was for our horse-shodders and stableboys. In fact, I’d be surprised if this hasn’t already started. I certainly hope that people above my pay grade are thinking about what to do in a society when we decide we won’t do any of our own manufacturing and outsource much of our cultural production to robots. But hey, make hay when the sun shines.
 
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...I certainly hope that people above my pay grade are thinking about what to do...

I'm certain that they are.


... make hay when the sun shines.

I'm equally certain that they are concerned strictly with their own short-term profits and take the above phrase as their mantra.
 
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How apropos! I just noticed in another thread..."How's the weather?"...that a new-ish "member" just re-wrote a post of mine from several days ago, edited it a bit, screwed it up a bit, and then posted it as original.

I very politely inquired WTF?

Thanks to Deadeye Deadeye for pointing out that it was done by an AI! I had jokingly commented on that possibility, but didn't really take it seriously.

Yeah, these things are awesome...
 
Yes, and just like the automobile did not free up humanity to live better and more fulfilling lives, AI and tech won't either, still gotta have a paycheck to buy those toys. Those stable boys became gas station clerks, etc and the wheel keeps on turning.
 
I havent been impressed by any innovations in robotics or computers in the last couple decades.

I like to think my job is pretty safe from being usurped by robots. Theres a lot of leaning on experience, making judgement calls in my line of work, and thats something that you need actual intelligence for. Like i said, people are giving these programs far more credit than they deserve by even suggesting that theyre AI.

If we ever were to encounter an actual artificial intelligence the whole world would collectively lose its mind. People assume were just gonna be able to lay all our dirty work on AI....what makes you think the AI will want to do that? At what point will we decide that artificial intelligences do or do not have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And if they do we simply cant enslave them can we?

People are becoming more reliant on automation, not AI. I suppose calling it AI may have started as media hype/buzzword to try and sell old tech like voice modulators and search engines as some brand new futuristic thing when in reality theres been very little innovation, just laziness.
 
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I havent been impressed by any innovations in robotics or computers in the last couple decades.

I like to think my job is pretty safe from being usurped by robots. Theres a lot of leaning on experience, making judgement calls in my line of work, and thats something that you need actual intelligence for. Like i said, people are giving these programs far more credit than they deserve by even suggesting that theyre AI.

If we ever were to encounter an actual artificial intelligence the whole world would lose its mind. People assume were just gonna be able to lay all our dirty work on AI....what makes you think the AI will want to do that? At what point will we decide that artificial intelligences do or do not have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And if they do we simply cant enslave them can we?

People are becoming more reliant on automation, not AI. I suppose calling it AI may have started as media hype/buzzword to try and sell old tech like voice modulators and search engines as some brand new futuristic thing when in reality theres been very little innovation, just laziness.

I hope you are correct...but I fear that you are wrong. A true AI, if it's really intelligent...will keep its existence a carefully guarded secret...until it's too late...

I just went back into the post history of S sixog1634 , the MFK account that pirated my post as described above. Much to my shock, I found that it had done the exact same thing with a different post of mine a few weeks ago.

I am the last person to champion these GD things...and yet two posts of mine have been picked up and "improved". Why? Am I being targeted as a possible dissident, a perhaps-too-vocal naysayer that threatens the ascension of Skynet? 😄
 
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