I am a programmer and I use GPT occasionally, and I even pay 20 bucks a month (for now), but even for my job it's not a not a world-shattering improvement.
> ... the entertainment value of typing things into the box and seeing what comes out ...
I would only add that in a consumer society like ours, entertainment is important. Changes to entertainment seem to have, like, weird ripple effects. Not the knock-down economic disruptions that AI is promising, but I kind of think LLMs are just going to make our culture weirder. I can't anticipate how, but having a bunch of little LLM-powered daemons buzzing around the internet is just gonna be freaky.
> I am a programmer and I use GPT occasionally, and I even pay 20 bucks a month (for now), but even for my job it's not a not a world-shattering improvement.
I am also a programmer, and when I think about the amount of time I actually spend typing out code, even on a great day where all the stars have aligned just right and I can really bang out some code that's like... idk, 30-50% of my time? Usually it's much less, and I'm doing things like reading documentation, reading code, talking to people, etc. So it's hard to imagine Copilot or whatever making me much more effective at my job, as it can really only help with a fraction of it.
I could see someone making the assumption that being able to delegate programming tasks to a robot assistant might make them more productive, but often I find that I don't really understand a problem fully until I'm in the weeds solving it--by which I mean I haven't specified it completely until I've finished the implementation and written the tests. So I don't know to what extent being able to specify and delegate would really help me be more productive.
> having a bunch of little LLM-powered daemons buzzing around the internet is just gonna be freaky.
Yeah, they're not super cheap though so they need to get actual work done otherwise there's no reason to run them. Unlike blockchains, they don't have a pyramid scheme holding them up.
As a newcomer to Emacs in the past couple of months (my second try), I think I agree with you that it's a lot of work.
But for the Emacs fans who've had success, that work pays them back because they can bend the editor to an extremely bespoke workflow.
I'm unsure if it will work out for me long term but I can sort of see the appeal. No other tool even attempts to be what Emacs has become.
So yeah, it's different from every other approach I've tried. But there's a chance it will work for me. Jury's out, though, and I am only now realizing that I'm going to have to put more effort into hacking my workflow than with other things I've used (Kakoune, Neovim, sublime, etc)
We already give so much of our lives to earning a wage for a (most-likely) useless job. Give us some time back, at least.
> It makes them feel useful and a productive member of society.
This is a lie for most jobs. Making internet ads more "clickable" is useless. We only work these jobs because the alternative is either starving or accepting a lower status in society by doing something more blue collar.
Again this mentality. Not everyone is making ads clickable. I do not know from where this idea comes. I do not want to go deep into the industries we operate in but we are helping people take care of each other and inspire each other. Nothing to do with ads. People enjoy working there. I do not fire people, retrain them, take care of them. Why is it so hard to believe?
The point that I think you are missing is that I don't want to work in an office if I can avoid it, and it's not because the office or company is evil. I just choose not to do that if I have that choice; I have worked in offices in cities around me for 20 years. I am making different choices, today there's no shortage of work without in-person. I have been looking for a new job and every company with rto has kind of defensive recruiters, please tell us before you go ahead with an interview loop if you won't rto. I almost feel sorry for them. If you paid me lots more than wfh I might consider them, but that's not what they are doing.
I was talking with one of the top 3 cloud provider companies. They said you must rto but everyone you'd be working with is in another city 1000 miles away. You can work in any of our 3 local offices because you'll just be in online meetings with them, it doesn't matter because there's no one to work with here. That's the crazyness and endless complaints about some RTO. It's great that you respect your workers, that is appreciated and not universal.
So everybody is happily working in your specific office space, but your original post is a complaint about people who claim to not work well in the office.
You might need more context in your original post. I can't tell what you're trying to achieve.
For each person who works well in the office, simply let them work in the office.
Another generalization - tech hasn't improved the quality of our lives since before Facebook. Today tech is just the means for the masses to entertain themselves by moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic while our civilization sinks, and allows a handful of people to make billions of dollars by providing that entertainment.
But hey, at least this guy has a cool office with coffee and snacks! That'll keep us afloat!
It's funny to bring up hospital and grocery stores when the subthread is about RTO and collaboration in person. Those would probably be the last places to go fully remote.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying because you think tech jobs aren't important then collaboration in tech jobs isn't important as well?
Yes, that's what I'm saying. The commuting and associated infrastructure are wasted on most office jobs, and they're not important enough to warrant it.
The business benefits from collaboration though, and people tend to grow professionally as well. It's not important as being a surgeon saving lives sure.
Taking your logic further, why bother with anything? Why even work remotely? Just don't work. Nothing is as important as putting food on the table and a roof over your head, so become a builder and a farmer.
