this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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I kind of feel like it's a bit overwrought - and not supported by current tech anyway. I could predict where the tech will go, but I don't think that's possible to do in a reasonable way over a useful time-span for this.
Lets look at the proposed affected jobs(I'll leave out the ones I just don't have enough knowledge about to even hazard a guess):
Interpreters + Translators: I haven't tried GPT for this, but I imagine it's likely not too much more affecting than google translate. For people and situations where machine translation is good enough - this has been happening for quite a while. I have my doubts that this will change the trajectory of that field. Translation seems like something that you can't "edit after the fact" - you have to do the whole translation anyway to see if the machine translation is right or missing important non-literal parts.
Writers and Authors: I can see this speeding their work up, and enabling people who might have story ideas and be a decent editor but not a good first draft writer to become authors. However, writers have been dealing with both lowered standards for technical writing and content glut for many years - I don't think this changes that appreciably.
Public Relations Specialists: I feel like this is massively devaluing the psychology and experience in PR. It might well replace press release writing, but I just bet there's more there than is obvious to everyone.
Tax Preparers: If you're doing fine with TurboTax - you've been doing this for decades now. If you can't solve it with existing traditional tax software, it's often because you just aren't sure about vague tax rules, or complex tax rules. And you usually want someone else to take on some liability and ability to represent you if you're audited. I don't see how GPT changes this fundamentally.
Mathematicians: Really? It's horrible at math.
Proofreaders and Copy Markers: Also really? I feel like for a while at least there's going to be more proofreading of the output of GPT for factual content and style.
It's mostly BS. The only ones that really need to worry are jobs where doing things accurately don't really matter and where that work is very time consuming to do or there's an absolute ton of it (and also doesn't involve physically doing anything).
Types of jobs impacted would be tier one call center staff whose primary role is to function as a filter to tier two. Technically their job could be replaced with a pre-recorded message already, but people tend to ignore those so they're less effective than having a person just read a script to the caller. Other impacted jobs would be movie extras or very cheap actors where a wooden or slightly off performance could be ignored.
Lastly some jobs will be changed but not replaced. A lot of the initial work of things like concept artists, editors, certain kinds of script writers, and analysts will be generated and then they'll spend their time refining or fixing that initial copy. Ironically this will most likely lead to even more demand for those kinds of jobs as finding and fixing mistakes in generated content can be more time consuming than doing it right the first time.
The big elephant in the room of course is that it's going to be very expensive to run these systems, and you're going to need a whole group of high skill specialists to maintain and operate them. Just like self driving trucks you're just replacing a large group of low skill cheap workers with a medium sized group of high skill very expensive workers. Ultimately this will be far more expensive for companies, but for those that can afford it the increased volumes will offset the increased costs.
This feels like wishful thinking. Any automated system (cars, LLMs, etc) only need to be better than a human doing that job. Your example, for, um, example, ignores that self-driving trucks don't need to take sleep breaks, or bathroom breaks, or spend time with their families, etc.
Using the assumption that this is the bottom of the curve for this LLM technology and that we still have a lot of expansion in the tech coming in a relatively short amount of time, then I would guess that any job that makes art that is "work for hire" will cease to exist, and I imagine programming is going to take a pretty big hit in available jobs. I don't think you'll be able to get rid of human programmers altogether, but you'll need way fewer of them.
I'm not ignoring that, but you're ignoring that these systems have their own associated costs. A self driving truck might not need bathroom breaks, but it does need regular maintenance which given the increased complexity of such a system is going to be significantly more expensive than a normal truck and require more skilled labor to properly maintain. That's why I said it's more expensive, but large companies can make it up in volume. The extra expense only makes sense if you can take advantage of the E.G. increased transport capacity provided.
You're assuming that LLMs can ever be made accurate. I think you might be able to make them somewhat more accurate, but you'll never be able to trust their output implicitly. You will always need someone reviewing and fixing what they produce. For something entirely subjective like art that's probably acceptable, but not for anything that requires any amount of accuracy.
As a programmer I am absolutely not worried in the slightest that LLMs are coming for my job. I've seen LLM produced programs, they're an absolute trash fire, most of them won't even compile let alone produce correct output. LLMs might be coming for really really bad programmers jobs, but anyone with even a shred of talent has nothing to worry about.
There's a famous saying out there about programming that goes:
LLMs are very much an exercise in the later not the former. I'm sure there will be a bunch of jobs soon for programmers to check and fix LLM generated code, but you couldn't pay me to do that job. That's going to be absolutely miserable work and way harder than just writing the code yourself in the first place. Ultimately companies are going to figure out it's cheaper to just skip the LLM in the first place and then the whole thing will be dead. One things for sure though, you won't need fewer programmers, you'll need more of them.
Isn't this functionally the same thing? What happens to smaller companies in this hypothetical? Are you not assuming that they get pushed out of the market shortly thereafter?
I am assuming this. I am assuming that we're at the bottom of this technology's sigmoid curve, there is going to be a ton of growth in a relatively short amount of time. I guess we'll have to wait to see which one of us has a better prediction.
You have described the state of LLMs right now. Programming languages seem like a perfect fit for a LLM; they're extremely structured and meticulously (well, mostly) defined. The concepts and algorithms used not overly complex for a LLM. There doesn't need to be much in the way of novel creativity create solutions for standard use cases. The biggest difficulty I've seen is just getting the prompting clear enough. I think a majority of the software engineering field is on the chopping block, just like the "art for hire" crowd. People pushing the limits of the fields will be safe but that's a catch 22, isn't it? If low-level entry is impossible, how does one get to be a high-level professional?
And even if we take your [implied] stance that this is the top of the S-curve and LLMs aren't going to get much better-- it will still be a useful tool for human programmers to increase productivity and reduce available jobs.
You shouldn't trust ChatGPT for that, but your company could definitely spin up their own LLM and then we're back at the problem.
I think you’re underestimating the impact here. It obviously won’t replace all of the jobs in these fields, but even shortening or eliminating enough tasks will have impacts on employment levels. If fewer people can do the same amount of work, some of those people will be laid off.
Hasn't this been the case always? One excavator operator can dig a hole for house foundation way faster than 10 guys with shovels; one truck driver can deliver more cargo than a caravan of horse-drawn carriages; one electronic computer can solve math problems way faster than a room full of humans doing paper-and-pencil calculations; e-mails are faster and can carry way more data than telegraph. AI is just the next step on this path. AI is not the problem, our neoliberal capitalist economic system that seeks unlimited growth of profit is.
I largely agree that the system is the problem and not AI. But we live in that system and will need to prepare for the impacts that will unfold within it.
Maybe my phrasing wasn't clear, but the areas where I said I didn't see it changing the trajectory much for the job, I meant that (as I mentioned with writers) the prospects already had lots and lots of competition and a very small percentage of people who'd like to do the job actually can make a living doing it. The numbers are already close to winning the lottery, I just don't see AI making it like wining the powerball (multi state lottery) a substantive difference to people trying to "make it" in that field. If I'm already at 1 in 10 million, I don't see that my decision making is going to be that affected if AI makes it 1 in 20 million. I don't think people make decisions in that way.
And for government interventions - do we subsidize writers now? If not, I just don't see it politically, economically, or even philosophically to make sense to do so because of AI.
One thing to note is that making an industry more efficient (like translating, which gpt is really good at, much better than google translate but not necessarily better than existing tools) comes with a decrease in the amount of jobs. Tech doesn't have to eliminate the human portion, but if it even makes one more human twice as efficient in their job, thats half the humans you need doing that job for the same amount of work output.
That being said this is not a great infographic for this topic.
I think the utility for technical papers and documents may be a bit overstated as well. There's usually templates for these documents if possible. If not, the topic is broad enough that I don't think you could provide a suitable prompt to generate meaningful text.
Course that's just my 2 cents as someone who's approaching this as highly skeptical. We should see how it performs in these areas and test it out. It's just premature to make employment or policy decisions, imo.