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Comment by deelowe | Hacker News Reader

I personally sat in meetings in 2022 where we adjusted staffing projections in anticipation of AI efficiency. Sure some of it was "overhiring," but the reality was that those staffing goals were pre-ai. Once they were updated, that's when the layoffs started because management didn't want anyone who didn't have an AI or big data background.

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Gen-AI was still extremely niche in 2022; ChatGPT didn't come out until the end of the year, on 30 November, and it was pretty much just a toy curiosity until mid-2023 when GPT-4 came out. I am very surprised that leadership at your company was seriously discussing the business impact of AI that early on.

Chat gpt wasn't considered a toy... Not sure where you got that. We were interested in what openai was going from very early given the founders' history.

It absolutely was considered a toy by most people when it debuted in late 2022. This was the era when memes abounded about how ChatGPT would dutifully answer the query "what's the world record for crossing the English Channel on foot?" [0] or "what weighs more, a pound of feathers or a kilogram of bricks?" [1]

Most people didn't start taking ChatGPT/gen-AI seriously until mid-2023, when GPT-4 became widely used.

[0] https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*yJs...

[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fpl09fAakAE1cFW?format=jpg&name=...

You can see for your self how seriously HN users took ChatGPT in late 2022 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1672444800&dateRange=custom&...

Some of the highlights include:

* Building a Virtual Machine Inside ChatGPT https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33847479 (Dec 3, 2022; 2029 points; 919 comments)

* Disputing a Parking Fine with ChatGPT https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33937753 (Dec 10, 2022; 606 points; 348 comments)

* ChatGPT passes the 2022 AP Computer Science A free response section https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33858844 (420 points; Dec 4, 2022; 455 comments)

* ChatGPT is a ‘code red’ for Google’s search business https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34086462 (396 points; Dec 23, 2022; 636 comments)

* Build your front end in React, then let ChatGPT be your Redux reducer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34166193 (395 points; Dec 28, 2022; 142 comments)

Hacker News is not most people. Even today most non-tech people I speak to have barely touched AI. Perhaps a bit of gimmicky “ooh that’s cool” image generation or chatGPT, but nothing serious.

Warren Buffet is also not most people, yet people like him have far more to do with what actually happens on the stock market than the tens millions of retail investors.

...so? It seems that you forgot what this thread is about.

I mean very good job staying on-top of new tech but you're not actually trying to imply your not the anomaly in that regard right?

He was certainly on top of new technology movement but signs were there the whole time.

I wasn’t aware of ChatGPT in 2022 but I was aware that we could not keep data scientists hired long term because several faangs like meta were just dropping 100% increases in salary as the opener to our people for some mega project related to machine learning based on the skill set of the people being hired

Correct. We didn't know chatgpt would be huge but we knew big data and ai were the next big thing and we're investing heavily in that space. The funding for this came from sre teams, pms, etc.

Not for people paying attention to the entire AI space. GPT wasn't the only thing going on at the time. AlphaGo was a big deal for anyone paying attention.

Huge difference between people with forward thinking and without, right.

GitHub Copilot was out there in 2021. The "chat about anything" era hadn't really begun, but "your computer can write code for you" era was well underway. And given that said business wanted to retain the people it had with AI/big data backgrounds, strongly suggesting it isn't like a restaurant where it would be unlikely that any staff would have that kind of experience, we can reasonably assume that they are in that particular niche.

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