The workers already replaced by artificial intelligence | Hacker News Reader

The workers already replaced by artificial intelligence

bbc.com

36 pointspg_123418 comments

Call center workers are going to be hit very hard by AI. Especially if the company can convert a lot of requests to text chat. GPT-4 and even GPT-3.5 can handle almost anything routine related to servicing many types of accounts, especially now with the new function calling.

Also Whisper and especially Eleven Labs can be very good at realistic speech/understanding. Although maybe a bit slow still if waiting for GPT-4.

And I bet Falcon-40b can be tuned to handle a ton of call center (or chat-based customer service) requests.

Yes. I already use GPT-4 to replace support for a 3D CAD system I use, since it is usually takes a significant time & effort to get through to tech support, and this often provides very good answers (up to 2021).

I think the best solution would be for them to train and implement a version of GPT-4 or similarly capable LLM on all of their documentation and support logs, then keep the live users to handle the issues where the LLM fails and to continue training it on new info.

(But of course, management will likely just dump the people before it is even time, as with the examples in the article, following the ensittification principle of monetization of evertyhing. Seems like that was missed in the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition.)

I'm working an a product doing just that. MVP should be ready by end June

Excellent!! For what products? Let me know how it goes (email in profile)

I have been wondering lately if this is the fate of all content that can be created or expressed digitally. Music, art, movies, books, software could all be created by AI. The only thing “safe” are tangible goods.

I also wonder if this will lead to a dumbing down of certain fields. Why write a book of it never gets published (apart from the enjoyment of it) which leads to fewer writers and a dying art form.

It’s a bleak outlook and likely wrong, but just thinking.

I don't know about you, but I don't have interest in listening to AI generated music, or exclusively AI generated music.

I want to go listen to a real live person perform.

Same for all the other performing arts for that matter.

I think we are really far away from robots controlled by AI performing a live Broadway musical for example.

Heck we are far away from robots singing with the human emotion of a talented singer as far as I have seen.

Broadway musicals were disrupted a long time ago, what is left is crumbs for people who have a niche interest; these jobs will not be replaced by AI because it is already an anachronism that has been replaced by other entertainment for the mainstream.

I do think purely AI art isn't really close to disrupting anything since what is being produced without human editing/selection is generally pretty mediocre, as the copy writer in the article mentioned, and we are quite sensitive to the quality of the entertainment we consume, unlike marketing copy.

I think the big problem is what this is going to do to human creativity. Even if Human Artists still perform the Music, the AI can quickly and easily write music lyrics and create artwork from the suggestions you give it, and its already quite decent. So what are the people that enjoyed doing that themselves going to do, when Bing can do in minutes what they would have spent a week or two doing. Are humans just going to be project managers, that guide the AI that creates everything (no offence to project managers intended.) The big risk is that doing anything creative ourselves will just seem so completely pointless, that all the work done will be AI assisted, because it will be so easy.

I never understood this point of view.

Computers are way better than humans at lots of things, but that doesn't stop humans from spending lots of time on many of those things they enjoy even though a computer can do it better.

Like playing chess just for one example.

I do creative stuff because I enjoy doing it. I couldn't care less that a computer is better than me at it. Lots of people are better than me at it and have always been. Just as that doesn't stop my own enjoyment of doing it myself, neither would a computer being better than me stop my own enjoyment of it.

> I don't have interest in listening to AI generated music

The point is, you won’t know

How would I not know?

I go to venues to listen to live music so I see the human performer performing.

I vastly prefer live performances to recordings.

AI is just a polished Dali, a nicer played Beatles song, a more grammatically correct text on the style of Victor Hugo or Balzac. But its a variation and a copy. What we call AI creations are variations of styles.

Humans what something new, a new style of Playing Guitar, a new way of telling a Movie story, a unique mode of writing a Romance. You won't get that from the current AI technology.

I predict a stronger enforcement of copyrights laws, a stronger enforcement of the use of what is the essence of an artist, a drawing style, a playing mode, a demeanor of an actor. So as to avoid AI copies these personas and makes millions of digital copies of Agent Smiths. It will have to be tested in court but it will be made precedent quite quickly I believe. Or at least the creators will want financial compensation.

You will also see stronger gates around knowledge. Enforcement of personal licensed DRM, with AI entities explicitly forbidden from accessing that content...Open Source Code with updated licenses, that forbids it's use for AI training.

We can go one level up semantically and say that the workers are replaced by automation. AI is a subset of that.

Key bit of info for the headlining person: "Mr Meadowcroft can't be certain, but he's pretty sure the AI replaced them."

It's possible his employer saw they could use AI and cheaper labor, but not AI alone. AI generated text for publication is not trustworthy at the moment, but it's possible with enough time and input it could be made to be that way. It will depend upon what happens the first time a company puts out something AI written, and intelligent humans find some glaring error and blow a hole in it.

I think translation and voice over is going to be the biggest AI replacers. Audiobooks by AI sound terrible now, but I remember the voice over feature on the first Kindles and it's come a ways.

Have you tried running the book through Eleven Labs?

I'm probably ignorant on this subject, but I find myself surprised by the anecdotes in the article. For example with the voice over actor, for my whole life, speech synthesis has been a thing that has been improving. Did this person think they were going to do this work for the next 20 years?

I don't mean to victim-blame as i really do understand how dreadful this must feel. I just want to understand the mindset and prepare myself mentally for when I see automation coming for my own career

What about translation?

I think it depends how good you need the translation to be.

I’d say current automation is ‘good enough’ for most cases, but you wouldn’t rely on it for translating a contract and it would probably still miss a lot of slang and local dialects.

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