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I'm going to shamelessly steal @Scimitar's post from the Friday Fun thread because I think we need to talk about LLMs in a CW context:
A few months ago OpenAI dropped their API price, from $0.06/1000 tokens for their best model, to $0.02/1000 tokens. This week, the company released their ChatGPT API which uses their "gpt-3.5-turbo" model, apparently the best one yet, for the price of $0.002/1000 tokens. Yes, an order of magnitude cheaper. I don't quite understand the pricing, and OpenAI themselves say: "Because
gpt-3.5-turboperforms at a similar capability totext-davinci-003but at 10% the price per token, we recommendgpt-3.5-turbofor most use cases." In less than a year, the OpenAI models have not only improved, but become 30 times cheaper. What does this mean?https://old.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/11fn0td/the_implications_of_chatgpts_api_cost/
...or about $0.13 per hour. Yes technically it overlooks the fact that OpenAI charge for both input and output tokens, but this is still cheap and the line is trending downwards.
Full time minimum wage is ~$20k/year. GPT-3.5-turbo is 100x cheaper and vastly outperforms the average minimum wage worker at certain tasks. I dunno, this just feels crazy. And no, I wont apologize for AI posting. It is simply the most interesting thing happening right now.
I strongly agree with @Scimitar, this is the most interesting thing happening right now. If you haven't been following AI/LLM progress the last month, it has been blazingly fast. I've spent a lot of time in AI doomer circles so I have had a layer of cynicism around people talking about the Singularity, but I'll be damned if I'm not started to feel a bit uncomfortable that they may have been right.
The CW implications seem endless - low skill jobs will be automated, but which tribe first? Will HR admins who spend all day writing two emails be the first to go? Fast food cashiers who are already on their way out through self ordering consoles?
Which jobs will be the last to go? The last-mile problem seems pretty bad for legal and medical professionals (i.e. if an LLM makes up an answer it could be very bad) but theoretically we could use them to generate copy or ideas then go through a final check by a professional.
Outside of employment, what will this do to human relations? I've already seen some (admittedly highly autistic) people online saying that talking to ChatGPT is more satisfying than talking to humans. Will the NEET apocalypse turn into overdrive? Will the next generation even interact with other humans, or will people become individualized entirely and surround themselves with digital avatars?
Perhaps I'm being a bit too optimistic on the acceleration, but I can't help but feel that we are truly on the cusp of a massive realignment of technology and society. What are your thoughts on AI?
I predict absolutely nothing will happen to medical professionals because of AI. We've already had "AIs" (aka expert systems) that perform as well or better as trained medical professionals in diagnosis for decades, yet they're used approximately nowhere.
agree. Robotic surgery hasn't put a dent in salaries either.
Not the same at all though. Robotic surgery enhances the power of the human surgeon, making more different types of surgery possible and thus increasing demand.
On the other hand, with near-term AI advancements, specialties like radiology could be completely eliminated. Radiologists wouldn't gain more power. They would be completely useless.
Come to think of it, are radiologists starting to sweat? IIRC, radiology is one of the hardest specialties to get a residence in. Is that starting to loosen?
I'd love to see an AI try and intubate someone, or deal with a difficult airway. Or give spinal anaesthesia, or an epidural, or a brachial plexus block. Anaesthesiology is much more procedure oriented than you think. There is no chance it could be done by a robot without tremendous technological advances.
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