Yes, I’m using its version 3 via Bing.
Yes, I see the debates.
Yes, getting an answer like “sorry for your issue with this, here’s what you can do” that makes sense and is pretty much accurate, is a lot more natural and enjoyable than parsing a page of SEO’d blue links.
Yes, it is freaking me out, when I see that version 4 is a lot better than 3 and that the very first LLM only came out in 2018. And that it does almost as well in any language than it does in English.
At that pace, it’s not hard to see what’s going to happen. One example.
ChatGPT is an insanely good coding assistant. Remember how we told kids, “learn to code and you’ll be fine!”. Well now we know that we probably need ten times less programmers, compared to what we thought in 2010. That means ten times less money being saved for retirement of folks born in the 80s/90s, but I digress.
The implications of LLMs are hard to comprehend but it’s about to wash our worlds. I’m afraid of a few things:
- Bots are now going to be so impossible to detect that coupled with folks not being cautious or tech savvy, it is going to fuel a level of scams that we can’t possibly imagine.
- It’s going to create an absurd, default, strong distrust between all of us in digital worlds. Is it Auntie in the group chat? No way to know for sure. Who’s writing those posts? Me here but otherwise, not sure.
- It’s just frightening how many jobs can be automated or semi-automated with LLMs. Six-figure jobs doing nothing but writing stuff are gone. If they’re not gone now, they are on their way out.
- It’s impossible to see at what pace or how those jobs will be gone, but it’s already happening. We’ll realize it when it’s done. Scary shit.
- Over the past 20 years, we have outsourced like crazy to developing countries. That’s over. Support work is going back home to data centers now. The impact on emerging economies is going to be felt for the next decades. Which means more emigration.
- Remote work exploded with the pandemic but with AI? That’s going to be forever now. There’s a huge brand new Warner Bros office on Venice Blvd. It’s for TV folks, who work from home on their laptops and Zoom constantly. The building is constantly empty. It will stay empty now and that was pretty much impossible to foresee when the building was built, years ago. Repeat that times a million across the country.
Two things that make me happy though: LLMs scan the internet for information and reasoning logic. My 15+ years blog is feeding them too! Second, I hope that this technological progress really makes people understand how we need UBI now and forever.
What a time to be alive has become really accurate to me.