Artificial General Intelligence and the Future

Random musings:

AI will change the world in time. The speed of innovation is accelerating and some jobs, companies, etc are going to cease to exist.

However, without new human input, these models will collapse over time. They need new material to keep their output “fresh”. Think about a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. The quality degrades over time. The same is true with these models. If all they train on moving forward is AI generated content, the content will eventually suck ass.

If you aren’t playing around with AI, you’re missing out. It will make you more efficient at the boring tasks that you have to do. Big companies are trying to figure this out at breakneck speed and I’m sure they’ll (stupidly) cut some jobs in the near future.

I despise the fact that the commercial tools are censored. I understand why these companies are censoring them, however, (1) there is a very strong bias in the current censorship and (2) it’s a poor reflection on society as a whole that we do have to censor these tools. I haven’t been able to get the DAN hack to work in a while, so me and some buddies are going to toll our own (Llama) soon just to remove this barrier. I know that it’s not as good as GPT 4, but I want to play around with them unfiltered.

 

Thanks , you just sent me down a day long YouTube binge on that channel.

 

I hope you are right, but I find this a very anthropocentric viewpoint. It is making humans out to be something special when perhaps we are not. What if the AI isn't making copies of copies, but does what humans do, and builds on the shoulder's of the giants that came before them.

That is my fear. Your view is no different than the old "computers will never beat a human at chess" view point.

 

We still play chess despite the fact there is a computer that can beat us. Your fear is no different than the angst over new technologies in the past (the candlemaker scared of the lightbulb). Jobs will be destroyed, but new jobs will emerge.

Listen, I’m concerned about these tools too, especially with evil people getting a hold of them, but it’s one reason that we need to democratize them as quickly as possible and get them, unfiltered, into everyone’s hands. It will help neutralize the nefarious side of them.

At the end of the day, I’m old enough that I *should* be ok. I’m more concerned for my kids.

Now, can someone please let Heupel know that he needs to be using AI to game plan. There is no reason we shouldn’t be loading these tools up with every [uck fay]ing thing we know about our rivals to assist us in our overall approach. I guarantee you that other teams have already thought about it.

 

I've thought about it and I think it could predict tendencies pretty easily but that isn't new. I think it could also be used to efficiently find weaknesses/flaws based on personnel and formation once it had some data, which could be useful in a new way that doesn't require hours of dedicated tape watching by a human

 

I think this analogy breaks down here in that we are not making a lightbulb to replace the candle, rather a new candlestick maker to replace the old candlestick maker.

We are not going to replace accounting, we are going to replace the accountant.

We are not going to replace truck driving. We are replacing the truck driver.

Like you, I am old enough (53) that I am not worried about me, though this stuff is happening so fast that perhaps I should worry about me. I am worried for my children.

 

I probably use ChatGPT to write more than half of my work emails now. I can ask it to write a professional email explaining why we can't do X because Y, explain why we are moving forward with Z, etc. and it spits something out in seconds with all of the formal sounding bullshit. I'll copy and paste it, maybe make a few small edits, add some personalization, and send it on. With the amount of emails I send in a day, it saves so much time.

 

My emails all amount to things like this:

"No"

"wtf are you talking about?"

"I explained that to you yesterday."

I write mine in the time it would take to open ChatGPT.

 

My big work emails are too technical and specific, and have information that didn't exist in 2021. I think I can get it to write memos for me from tables of info if I spent some time on it, though.

 

I write all my shit. No way, I'm letting a machine talk for me. I accept full responsibility for my stupidity.

P.S. "Get off my lawn!"

 

You can. I feed it dense 100+ page proposals all the time and have it summarize them for me. I’ve spot checked it enough to know that it’s in the ballpark, mostly in the infield.

The amount of time it saves me in synthesizing data is worth any small discrepancies that might exist.

Depends on what you need it for though.

 

What do you use? I'd like to feed tech docs but don't want to pay 20 bucks to try it. They are more than 100 pgs

 

GPT 4, but they provide it to us at work. We just got the 32k version this week, so can feed it up to 120k characters. You’ll have to pay for it to try it. Worth the $20 to kick the tires IMO.

 

I have only played with the free ChatGPT which uses 3.5. I hear 4.0 blows it out of the the water.

5.0 is going to be scary, I imagine.

 

I do this a lot now too. I also use it to summarize long email threads and extract any pressing action items.

The whole experience is too disconnected right now, but as soon as Microsoft goes GA with M365 Copilot, it’ll be more streamlined.

 

What do you do for a living?

 

I used to deliver technology projects. Ran a consulting division at a global SI up until a few years ago and then I jumped over and became a knuckle dragging sales guy selling the technology projects. I gotta stay up to speed on everything my company is trying to stuff in my bag to sell.

 

Better you than me. As I have gotten older, the tech stuff no longer holds my interest, which is ironic as i am a server admin at a college. I just hate that shit anymore, and I think a lot of it is because the companies, like every other capitalistic pig....er, corporation does is try to separate you from as many nickels as they can. Everything is pay us $25k a year license for this text editor instead of buying it once and using it.

But I digress!

 

I have seen alot of technology jumps during my working career and welcomed them.

However, I am glad I don't have to deal with the Chat AI stuff. I am sure it has its upside. I applaud you guys that understand it and use it as a tool for positive reasons.

I could tell alot about the competence and ability of those managers working for, and with, me based on their written communication skills from several perspectives. People will misuse it to game the system and hide their weaknesses rather than improve. Jmo.

Edit: And yes, corporations will misuse it to replace humans.

 

I agree. I got into this industry because I liked computers and were good at them. I use to love technology, now I mostly don’t care. Used to be a gamer, now mostly don’t care. I’d rather go sit outside with a cold beer, cigar and some tunes and hang with the family.

I know some of that is age related too. I’m on the downslope of my career (albeit younger than you old man) and looking forward to unplugging from all this shit at some point.