I'm sure that a film director is an expert on the technical underpinnings of large language models, which primarily are used to generate blocks of text that have the appearance of being coherent.
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Several departments where I work had massive layoffs in favour of implementing customized versions of GPT4 chatbots (both client facing services and internal stuff). That’s just the LLM end of AI.
That’s not even considering the generative image spectrum of AI. I fear for my companies graphics, web design, and UX/UI teams who will probably be gone this time next year.
I work freelance but occasionally needed to partner with artists and other stuff. But I now use various “ai” projects and no longer need to pay people to do the with as the computer can do it good enough.
I’m not some millionaire, I’m just a guy trying to save money to buy a house one day, so it’s not like a large economic impact, but I can’t be the only one.
Ux is not about drawing pictures. That work is already automated by ui kits anyway. Ux is about thinking through requirements and research.
I know very well what UX is having studied it as my major in uni. Senior executives do not know what it is and have and are making decisions to “replace” them with LLMs and “prompt engineers”. I see it daily at work.
There is a great disconnect where hiring managers and executives see LLMs as a quick win that will cut costs and make moves to cut costs without doing any analysis.
Suits are idiots. No argument there.
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We're a long way out from that fortunately.
Not saying that some jobs won't be cut/lost, but the companies doing that were likely looking for reasons to downsize.
AI models do not replace competent UI/UX. That's just not what they're designed to do. Very different functions.
Even though you are technically correct, you assume people who are in charge of making decisions have the same insight and knowledge you do about the current limitations of gen ai.
I absolutely assure you that senior managers think it is fully matured since it gives convincing answers and they have made permanent and expensive decisions based off of this viewpoint. To them, it fully replaces UX/UI and developers. So they have made cuts. We’re currently sourcing some offshore help to fix our customer service chatbot which keeps giving off-topic advice to users 🤪
Oh, 100 percent right you are. Definitely not saying clueless corporate idiot bosses aren't going to try and replace their workforce with AI.
But I am saying that it won't work for them after they do that. They're going to crash and burn here, and have lost that talent and expertise within their company so there's no replacing it, except slowly over time.
From personal experience I think they’ll keep doubling down and when that doesn’t prove successful, lobby governments to make changes or ask for bailouts.
My company (along with a whole onslaught of other similar orgs) successfully lobbied local politicians who convinced the mayor to pass a major bylaw that changed zoning rules and effectively killed remote work in my area.
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I can tell you now that AI won't come for UX/UI teams, at least not in the near future. Clients rarely are able to really articulate what they need out of software and until AI is smart enough to suss that out, we're good. That being said, I'm sure there will be companies that try to go that route but I doubt it will work, again, in the near term.
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I use Copilot in my work, and watching the ongoing freakout about LLMs has been simultaneously amusing and exhausting.
They're not even really AI. They're a particularly beefed-up autocomplete. Very useful, sure. I use it to generate blocks of code in my applications more quickly than I could by hand. I estimate that when you add up the pros and cons (there are several), Copilot improves my speed by about 25%, which is great. But it has no capacity to replace me. No MBA is going to be able to do what I do using Copilot.
As for prose, I've yet to read anything written by something like ChatGPT that isn't dull and flavorless. It's not creative. It's not going to replace story writers any time soon. No one's buying ebooks with ChatGPT listed as the author.
They’re not even really AI.
sigh. Can we please stop this shitty argument?
They are. In a very broad sense. They are just not AGI.
So much this. Most people under 40 must have grown up with video games. Shouldn't they have noticed at some point that the enemies and NPCs are AI-controlled? Some games even say that in the settings.
I don't see the point in the expression "AGI" either. There's a fundamental difference between the if-else AI of current games and the ANNs behind LLMs. But there is no fundamental change needed to make an ANN-AI that is more general. At what point along that continuum do we talk of AGI? Why should that even be a goal in itself? I want more useful and energy-efficient software tools. I don't care if it meets any kind of arbitrary definition.
I agree with you but this argument is never gonna go away.
It's never going to go away. AI is like the "god of the gaps" - as more and more tasks can be performed by computers to the same or better level compared to humans, what exactly constitutes intelligence will shrink until we're saying, "sure, it can compose a symphony that people prefer to Mozart, and it can write plays that are preferred over Shakespeare, and paint better than van Gogh, but it can't nail references to the 1991 TV series Dinosaurs so can we really call it intelligent??"
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An 85 year old film director*
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I like some of his movies but this article reads like someone who just imagined his worst fears, and with no ability to judge if it's probable or not.
The AI would turn off the worlds money system? What?
He's in his 80s. He's reached the point of the story where the old man shouts at clouds.
He's closer to 90s to add to your point
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I don’t think Ridley Scott knows how AI works.
Seriously, he's a director that made sci-fi movies. He has no qualifications whatsoever to answer this question. Of course, this will still rile up the critical thinking challenged crowd.
I used to think he completely lost it when he had the characters acting so dumb in his recent Alien universe films, for example when the crew of prometheus took off their helmets, but then watching how large parts of society acted with covid I am now not sure.
Humans repeatedly make bad choices, somebody is going to be really really dumb with their AI implementation when it gets to the level of actually being able to manage things.
I agree, yet for some reason celebrities who are not qualified to comment on these things have their voices amplified by the media.
And yet 90% of the population still has an anchoring bias due to the projections about AI people like him, Cameron, and all the rest of the Sci-Fi contributors made over the years.
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I may not be a computer scientist in real life, but I directed a movie based on a short story written by someone else who isn't a computer scientist in real life.
Yes, because we should all take note of what the art student says about AI. This guy is, essentially, a clown in this field. Why should we listen to him?
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This is equivalent of someone saying "I am afraid of nuclear energy, imagine every country running dozens of nuclear bombs that can go off at any moment". He clearly has no clue how AI works and is just fallen under the influence of fear mongers who know even less.
Christ, a good litmus test is that anyone who says "I'm afraid of AI because...' and then describes the end of modern civilization/the world can be dismissed.
This man's argument is literally "you could ask AI how to turn off all the electricity in Britain and then it would do it." Goddam.
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When the camera was invented, a lot of comercial artists lost their jobs. Why print an ad featuring a realistic drawing of your car, when you could just run a photograph?
People say they hate modernism, but it's a direct result of the photograph. Artists had to create things a photographer couldn't. What's the point of realism if it can be recreated effortless with the press of a button?
I do wonder what jobs AI will replace and what jobs they'll create? How will this change the art world? Will artists start to incorporate text and hands with the right amount of fingers into everything they do? Maybe human artists scede all digital media to AI, instead focusing on physical pieces.
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Who gives a fuck? People in hollywood just need to shut the fuck up.
I really love bladerunner but it has no ties to reality. Other than the dystopian shit.
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He might want to ask an AI about the historical events that inspired his fantasy movie so he understands why people criticize him for it.
Irony is Ridley Scott conscripting the Blade Runner to hunt and kill Rachael.
I think AI advances will continue to be just fast enough to have occasional "punctuation points" of short-lived buzz in the media. For example, I can see it getting good enough (and easy enough to use) that average normies will be able to create their own movies and games with it.
But, AI advances will remain slow enough to lull people into apathy about it (like global warming). It will very gradually encroach into more and more embedded systems, infrastructure, and cloud resources.
And at some point after that, it will accelerate in sudden and unexpected ways. I don't know if it will be a good thing or a bad thing when that happens. But considering how many tech bros and executives are sociopaths with no ethics, I'm not very optimistic it will be a good thing.
AI will probably be the final and ultimate achievement of humanity. When we have created true strong AI, the path is clearly towards the irrelevancy of human kind.
It's not that we will cease to exist, but we will not remain top of the ladder for long after that. Our significance will be comparable to dogs.
Other life will probably prosper more under their rule.
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Yes, the systems that we created and control are running rampant. Did you see the Spanish model? There'll be an army of incels worshipping ChatGPT by week's end! RUN!
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