[bgroat]

Something curious that I've noticed is that the people who I see that are MOST excited are in tech.

When I show ChatGPT to a lay person they don't really care.

When I show it to a professional copywriter they say that if they submitted this content to a client they would lose the client.

I'm reminded of when my son was learning to talk and everything he said seemed brilliant and coherent to me.

To any stranger it sounded like gibberish.

I think GPT is like my son, and all tech people are like excited parents.

Maybe the kid will learn to speak like an adult, but it can't yet

[satvikpendem]

Perhaps those in tech can simply see further out. It reminds me of the advent of the internet, the lay person also didn't care, until websites and web apps were made that catered to their needs. But the people who made those sites and apps were precisely the tech people who could see beyond the lay person's idea of what the internet was. So too with AI.

[bgroat]

This is the sort of stock line, and we're inclined to believe it because we're all in tech.

But go back on HN a decade and be really honest.

Are we any better than average at forecasting?

I'm starting to think that being on the bleeding edge and seeing so many possible alternate futures actually makes us worse

[JohnFen]

History clearly shows that we are no better than anyone else when it comes to predicting what's going to turn out to be important and world-changing.

Everyone is terrible at that.

[pedrosorio]

So too with NFTs and web3 /s

[jsutton]

Without the sarcasm, yes :)

[satvikpendem]

AI actually does something useful, Web3 doesn't.

[foobiekr]

Perhaps they have Gell-Mann amnesia and a case of engineer’s disease.

[nl]

You should speak to some teachers - or at least school students.

I guarantee students are more excited about it than tech people because they are using it to successfully pass assignments.

[IIAOPSW]

The system gave them work to keep them busy, now its been automated and keeps the system busy. I only regret it didn't exist when I was in school.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Teaching kids how to communicate by, for example, writing a book report or an essay is not "busy work". I feel very lucky that I had good teachers that focused on the basics of writing. I remember at the time not liking some of it at all (I had one teacher who made us diagram sentences endlessly), but as an adult I'm really grateful I had that education.

[robben1234]

Most things can only be learned through practice. Students skipping practice makes the whole system useless. Spinning wheels just to spin wheels.

[nl]

I think saying "oh it's busy work" without proposing a solution that doesn't involve orders of magnitude more work for teachers probably should spend a a few days in close proximity to a high school teacher.

[ticviking]

A way to work around busy work is exactly what schools need to make them stop assigning busy work.

[adrianN]

Ask the copywriter whether it takes longer to write the content themselves or to edit GPT's output to satisfy the client. If it's 10% faster to edit GPT's output, that means that we need 10% fewer copywriters.