this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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A more interesting “bear case” for AI is that, if you look at the list of industries that leading AIs like GPT-4 are capable of disrupting—and therefore making money off of—the list is lackluster from a return-on-investment perspective, because the industries themselves are not very lucrative. What are AIs of the GPT-4 generation best at? It’s things like:

writing essays or short fictions

digital art

chatting

programming assistance

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Weird that AI isnt replacing things like management, CEOs, stock investors, accountants... you know, jobs that tend to be about numbers and efficiency, which you would think AI would excel at.

Instead, we have it skirting copyright by stealing other people works and changing it just enough to not be a direct copy.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (3 children)

stock investors, accountants

Computers already replaced a lot of them long ago.

management, CEOs

What part of their jobs do you think an AI can replace?

[–] [email protected] 48 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What part of their jobs do you think an AI can replace?

The whole sitting around, profiting from actual laborers part, I'm guessing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

YouTube sacks people by algorithm for some time now.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (1 children)

the part where they collect all the money and go on vacations cant be replaced by ai but could certainly be extinguished.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not to darken your perspective, but you don't really think that AI's gonna remain as fundamentally stupid as it is currently, do you? As soon as any sort of self-awareness crops up (could be decades, could be months), you think it'll just install a global UBI, etc. and make all human life equally enjoyable and kush? Follow-up question: care to share what you're smoking?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Oh this day can come, but we're pretty much at the birth of this thing and what we have now is not close. There are a lot of cool theories currently but I don't really think we can really predict it this far for now. I think right now its beholden to its masters, so the capitalist elites will have their say on how we use it for now.

What I meant was that the job of a CEO doesn't really need to exist in its current form.

Follow up answer: I guess I smoke a variety of those types of things but way too seldomly to really give you a good answer.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

All fair points, and if you're ever on the Upper Left Coast, drop me a line. It all but grows on trees out here. 🤌🏼

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Dead line tracking, task tracking, and strategy creation with analysis over large datasets.

Acting as a trusted third part referencing agreed apon policy for conflict resolution. Decision making based on large data sets, relevent legal documents and company policy.

There is A LOT of work to go for current systems to do this work in a way that is trusted by stakeholders, but I see a lot of these tasks being more and more possible to done well enough to see it taking hold or at least supplementing existing tools.

In an ideal world the stake holders are the employees and community and the AI is constantly learning from and teaching the stakeholders to maintain cohesion and alignment.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Thank you for a serious answer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Weirdly the things it’s the worst at.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

AI will utterly upend the entertainment industry. Once AI can generate movie-length animated output, Hollywood will go the way of the vaudeville. Directors, film crew, actors and all the supply chain and ancillary industries revolving around movie-making will be obsolete.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

II thin it's actually possible. Normally the argument against is that "AI can't be creative" but when was the last time Hollywood made a creative movie? "Write a script for Spiderman movie. Include origin story. Spiderman will fight Green Goblin. Again.".

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

when was the last time Hollywood made a creative movie?

Most Pixar films. They're entirely animated in cg, and yet I highly doubt the ability of an ai to generate a better final product.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They can't what do you think the writers strike was all about??

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

The thing is, the protections writers won only protected them when working WITH AI. I.e. companies can't hire unionized writers and pay them less because they are using AI. If they can skip the writers all together all those protections go out the window.

I'm not saying this will happen soon or at all. I'm just saying that if the models become capable or generating screen ready material the protections writers won won't matter anymore.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What about LLMs that are taking over or helping with jobs that require sorting and organizing complicated data, and they do it fast, 24/7, and with just enough accuracy. They’re not flawless, but they mess up less than poorly trained and high turnover staff.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

LLMs don't sort or organize data. Machine learning can do it but LLMs specifically only generate text. I think that's the whole point. People confuse machine learning with LLMs. Machine learning can do amazing things in many industries. Companies creating dedicated products using machine learning can make money. LLMs themselves can do very little and huge valuations of companies like OpenAI don't make much sense.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

This is exciting it just probably hasnt come to fruition this quarter. And businesses that are succeeding with AI dont really need to brag about it in the news. (Amazon?)