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Ask HN: Burnout because of ChatGPT?

163 pointsby smdzalmost 2 years ago
TL;DR (summarised by ChatGPT) - I&#x27;m experiencing increased productivity and independence with ChatGPT but grappling with challenges such as lack of work-life boundaries and overwhelming information, leading to stress and burnout.<p>Long story...<p>I have been using ChatGPT for a while, and moved to the Plus subscription for their GPT-4 model, which I must say, is quite good.<p>1. ChatGPT makes us very productive. Personally, in my early 40s, I feel my brain is back in 20s.<p>2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative. [[EDIT: I may have implied a wrong meaning. To clarify - nobody&#x27;s going yet because of ChatGPT. It is just raising the bar high and higher. What took me years to learn, this thing can do already and much more. And I cannot predict the financial future of OpenAI or the markets in general.]]<p>A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference is that I can start trusting a human to improve, but I cannot expect ChatGPT to do so. Not that it is incapable, but because it is restricted by OpenAI.<p>And I have gotten better at using it. Calling myself a prompt-engineer sounds weird.<p>With all the good, I am now experiencing the cons, stress and burnout:<p>1. Humans work 9-5 (or some schedule), but ChatGPT is available always and works instantly. Now, when I have some idea I want to try out - I start working on it immediately with the help of AI. Earlier I just used to put a note in the todo-list and stash it for the next day.<p>2. The outputs with ChatGPT are so fast, that my &quot;review load&quot; is too high. At times it feels like we are working for ChatGPT and not the other way around.<p>3. ChatGPT has the habit of throwing new knowledge back at you. Google does that too, but this feels 10x of Google. Sometimes it is overwhelming. Good thing is we learn a lot, bad thing is that if often slows down our decision making.<p>4. I tried to put a schedule to use it - but when everybody has access to this tech, I have a genuine fear of missing out.<p>5. I have zero doubt that AI is setting the bar high, and it is going to take away a ton of average-joe desk jobs. GPT-4 itself is quite capable and organisations are yet to embrace it.<p>And not the least, it makes me worry - what lies with the future models. I am not a layman when it comes to AI&#x2F;ML - have worked with it until the past few years in the pre-GPT era.<p>Has anybody experienced these issues? And how do you deal with those?<p>* I could not resist asking ChatGPT the above - couple of strategies it told me were to &quot;Seek Support from Others&quot; and &quot;Participating in discussions or groups focused on ethical AI&quot;. *

51 comments

tivertalmost 2 years ago
&gt; 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative.<p>&gt; A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want. I agree that it cannot operate on its own. I still need to review and correct things. I have do that even when working with other humans. The only difference is that I can start trusting a human to improve, but I cannot expect ChatGPT to do so. Not that it is incapable, but because it is restricted by OpenAI.<p>I think this point bears repeating.<p>The threat of these models isn&#x27;t that they&#x27;ll go all Skynet and kill everyone, it&#x27;s that they&#x27;ll cause a lot of economic devastation to people who make a living through labor requiring skill and knowledge, <i>especially future generations of skilled labor</i>. Then there will be a decision point: either the senior-level people who thought they were safe get replaced by a more-advanced model, or they don&#x27;t and there&#x27;s a future society-level shortage because the pipeline to produce <i>more</i> senior-level people has been shut down (like the OP is doing).<p>The only people who will come out (relatively) unscathed are the ownership class, like always.<p>Of course, this is inevitable because it&#x27;s impossible to question or change our society&#x27;s ideological assumptions. They must be played out until they utterly destroy society.
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fleenoalmost 2 years ago
Can you elaborate on how you&#x27;re actually using ChatGPT? I&#x27;m a developer and I haven&#x27;t felt any need to use ChatGPT constantly.<p>What tasks are you delegating to ChatGPT that were previously done by humans? Most of my input from others is regarding current information specific to the task at hand. I don&#x27;t see how ChatGPT would have any idea what I&#x27;m talking about.<p>Do you have some specific examples you could share?
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karmajunkiealmost 2 years ago
&gt; 1. Humans work 9-5 (or some schedule), but ChatGPT is available always and works instantly. Now, when I have some idea I want to try out - I start working on it immediately with the help of AI. Earlier I just used to put a note in the todo-list and stash it for the next day.<p>This sounds like the root of your problem, and entirely on your ability to enforce boundaries (which you may or may not have set for yourself). No judgment here; I think we all have struggled with this at one time or another. Or, you know, constantly...<p>&gt; 4. I tried to put a schedule to use it - but when everybody has access to this tech, I have a genuine fear of missing out.<p>I definitely know that feeling. I think the likely outcome writ large is that this FOMO feeling will eventually subside. The economy for years has needed more developers than were available; ChatGPT and friends will result in individuals being able to do more and soak up demand that way instead of increasing supply. The long-term negative effect of this is more likely to be depressed wages instead of massive unemployment in the tech sector.<p>&gt; 5. I have zero doubt that AI is setting the bar high, and it is going to take away a ton of average-joe desk jobs. GPT-4 itself is quite capable and organisations are yet to embrace it.<p>Another way of looking at it is that its going to <i>create</i> a number of desk jobs, but those who can&#x27;t adapt to the tools on the market will suffer in the same way that people who couldn&#x27;t adapt to the use of spreadsheets, word processors, etc, certainly had fewer job opportunities than those who did. Some people are going to get left behind, no doubt—this is why I&#x27;m in favor of a robust social safety net. But even with questionable public support for those people, I don&#x27;t think anyone today would suggest we should retreat to an economy that didn&#x27;t have such basic tools as spreadsheets and word processor apps today.
Paul-Craftalmost 2 years ago
Interesting observations. For context, it looks like you are a software engineer from your comment history, is that correct?<p>I&#x27;m wondering why you&#x27;re feeling the need to hire juniors because of GPT-4. Is it because GPT-4 has taken up the cognitive load capacity you need for mentoring juniors, or do you feel like GPT &quot;obsoletes&quot; less experienced people?<p>I think ChatGPT&#x27;s advice is on the right track. It sounds to me like your experience of using it is kind of like my experience of pairing with someone else of equal-ish ability: productive, but draining, due to the need to constantly pay attention. If so, why not treat it similarly? Most people don&#x27;t pair all day every day, probably because of the aforementioned cognitive load of doing so.<p>Last, but not least, while this may seem obvious, you should remember that you are human and not a machine. You <i>need</i> to separate yourself from this thing for at least some portion of your day. The constant stress (and, yes, that dopamine rush you feel when you use it <i>is</i> a kind of stress -- stress isn&#x27;t always a purely negative thing) will take its toll on you eventually. That&#x27;s the &quot;burnout&quot; you&#x27;re perceiving, and the only way to prevent it is to just not let it happen.<p>Take care of yourself. Socialize and interact with humans, especially close friends and&#x2F;or SO&#x27;s as applicable. If you have a pet, spend some time with them. Take a walk.<p>But, most of all, remember that GPT-x, as smart as it may appear, can&#x27;t actually <i>learn</i> anything from experience. It can only learn from an expensive and labor-intensive process, and once its training is done, it&#x27;s frozen in time forever (modulo some fine-tuning, which is essentially an extension of said labor-intensive training process). And, at the end of the day, that just makes it a very versatile, very expensive, and very useful tool, but a tool nonetheless.
obblekkalmost 2 years ago
I&#x27;ve experienced a very similar feeling.<p>To me it feels exactly like finding wikipedia in 2005, or getting an iphone + wikipanion in 2008. The frontiers of my mind have been unleashed. A real bicycle for the mind.<p>Here are some tactics I use to &quot;turn off gpt&quot;:<p>1. It&#x27;ll be there tomorrow. The great thing about their threaded model is you can easily find the convo and continue it tomorrow. Remind yourself of that consciously (or tape it to your monitor!)<p>2. You&#x27;re not behind, you&#x27;re ahead. 80% of Americans haven&#x27;t tried chatgpt. 95% of the world maybe.<p>3. Don&#x27;t worry about juniors. They&#x27;ll still be hired because now they&#x27;ll ramp up faster and produce better code, using the same tool you&#x27;re using. Same thing that happened when stackoverflow became popular and junior devs stopped &quot;reading the source code&quot; or &quot;reading man pages.&quot;<p>For all the limitations of GPT4, it truly is great at coding. Exciting times.
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zer8kalmost 2 years ago
Waiting for your direct to Amazon book about how AI will kill software OP. Always entertaining.<p>ChatGPT will likely be added to the list of dead things that were supposed to &quot;kill&quot; the software developer. I&#x27;ve noticed this pervasive attitude among, what I can only term as, people who actually enjoy LinkedIn. If you understand what I&#x27;m saying you can probably already picture the annoying over the top buzzword written below-the-fold post that feels like its only designed to steal braincells. ChatGPT might be able to kill the CRUD developer like WYSIWIG killed HTML programmers. There will be plenty of jobs no one wants ChatGPT to touch. Finance, medicine, and military are some I can imagine without much thinking. &quot;No Code&quot; is on its, what, 4th iteration and still hasn&#x27;t killed programming. We are more likely to lose our jobs to overseas outsourcing than a stupid rock we tricked into thinking.<p>I am actually annoyed reading this Ask HN. The level of smugness reminds me of wantrepreneur bros. Woe is me I&#x27;m burned out from being <i>so productive</i>. Gag. I&#x27;m an actual professional developer. ChatGPT does not provide oodles of value to me. A lot of our juniors and mids use it and I often find problems with the way they copy-and-paste garbage. Admittedly, the copy-and-paste is better. However, to me it reduces to the same StackOverflow problem. Maybe if they were better &quot;prompt engineers&quot; (lol) they might get better output. Or they could take the 30 hours needed to figure out prompts to just simply do better at writing code.
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nomelalmost 2 years ago
&gt; At times it feels like we are working for ChatGPT and not the other way around.<p>Welcome to the future, where AI subscriptions (self or employee provided) are required for employment, with the majority of your work being management and high level input, where you guide and answering questions for the* AI.<p>*Probably &quot;The&quot; AI, since there will be one obvious choice for your problem space, which not using would put you at a severe disadvantage.<p>Seriously though, I&#x27;ve been feeling this somewhat too, lately. The &quot;investment&quot; part of ROI has been shifted significantly, for the &quot;junior&quot; side of things, where I can do &quot;boring&quot; things I wouldn&#x27;t normally. So, I find myself doing more boring tasks, with a definite net positive outcome, but also everything negative that you described.<p>The <i>problem</i> with this is that this ROI only the &quot;junior&quot; end of problem space, so, I&#x27;m working on more junior problems than I was before.<p>I think we&#x27;re somewhat proving that juniors are still needed, to take these tasks. They have been empowered the most, and will still learn and feel creative, working on these problems. More senior people won&#x27;t. I understand I&#x27;m saying this from a point of extreme privilege, but I think most of us need to <i>feel</i> creative, and &quot;enjoy&quot; what we&#x27;re doing. That means harder problems.<p>Maybe it&#x27;s best to still let the juniors continue to do the junior things. There&#x27;s someone out there that would <i>love</i> to spend all day doing what&#x27;s burning you out.
al2o3cralmost 2 years ago
<p><pre><code> ChatGPT has the habit of throwing new knowledge back at you. </code></pre> That&#x27;s certainly ONE way to characterize its tendency to hallucinate APIs and operating modes out of thin air.<p><pre><code> I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. </code></pre> You&#x27;ve just described how you&#x27;re overworked and burning out from doing too much stuff yourself. Are you sure about that absence of need?
bussyfumesalmost 2 years ago
Don&#x27;t discard the juniors, maybe ask them to process your prompts for you. That&#x27;ll give you some space.<p>I feel the opposite: I had a great experience asking GPT-4 to do some tasks for me and have been feeling like I&#x27;m missing out ever since by not using it more often.<p>However, I&#x27;m wary of posting work-related code into it so I either have to come up with similar examples, which is time-consuming or ask it conceptual questions for which I haven&#x27;t been able to make it much helpful. Sometimes I even noticed that a conversation with a colleague produced a much better result and it wasn&#x27;t even something very specific to the project. So yeah, I feel like it&#x27;s a great tool but I&#x27;m having a hard time using it productively. It definitely feels like being creative with your prompts is an important part of getting value out of it.
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kfarralmost 2 years ago
I’m reminded of the difference between being efficient vs effective. So much of the example use cases I see people — including myself — using GPT for are unimportant short-term tasks that necessarily take away head space and time from long-term important tasks. Those long-term important tasks are the hard ones requiring existing application context where I experience LLMs struggling. If we’re not careful we’ll get DDoS’ed by the tasks that an LLM can complete at the expense of other tasks. Of course this may change in the future as things progress, but is my observation for now.
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tethaalmost 2 years ago
&gt; 2. I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative.<p>The way I view it, I don&#x27;t hire juniors either. I&#x27;m much rather hiring the regular admin I&#x27;ll have on the team in a year or two who will take over all of the mundane stuff I currently have to handle. At that point, I don&#x27;t have to ask ChatGPT for a fix, think about the fix, implement the good parts... at that point, Zabbix will just open a ticket &quot;This is broken&quot; and someone else will take care of it.<p>That takes away real workload from me, and allows them to learn a lot.<p>&gt; 1. Humans work 9-5 (or some schedule), but ChatGPT is available always and works instantly. Now, when I have some idea I want to try out - I start working on it immediately with the help of AI. Earlier I just used to put a note in the todo-list and stash it for the next day.<p>Here, my main question would be: Why is ChatGPT special? I&#x27;ve burned midnight oil for an employer just with boring tools like terraform and a configuration management. They are paying me 9 - 5, and I&#x27;ll work for them most effectively during that time, which at this point certainly includes ChatGPT or Copilot. But I don&#x27;t really see the point of putting work in for them outside of office hours (and emergencies), regardless of the tools involved.
yodsanklaialmost 2 years ago
I&#x27;m a software engineer and I don&#x27;t find much value in ChatGPT. It provides a bit of help when writing very specific and short pieces of code for languages I know but don&#x27;t use often. I&#x27;d be curious to have actual data on how other SWEs use it.
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johnbellonealmost 2 years ago
Perhaps I do not understand what you&#x27;re actually using ChatGPT to do, but I can&#x27;t see it taking over the role of junior developers anytime soon.
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antodalmost 2 years ago
The future of being &quot;prompt engineers&quot; horrifies me. Prompt Engineering makes me think of Search Engine Optimisation as if it was a form of &quot;Engineering&quot;. What I mean is that you are positioning yourself based on your &quot;abilities&quot; to get useful results out of some gigantic proprietary system subject to the whims of its corporate owners where the skills are at best cargo culting or at worst self delusional.<p>All the while, all you&#x27;re really achieving is increasing the corporate masters profits at the expense of those getting left behind who don&#x27;t want to participate in this wholesale devaluing of human talent across wide swathes of different careers.<p>I worry for my kids generation if we can&#x27;t find a way for billions of people to add value again rather than squabble over the privilege of serving the decreasing few who profit from this.<p>Just my somewhat irrational luddite 2c worth.
sorokodalmost 2 years ago
&gt; I no longer feel the need to hire juniors.<p>This seems to be contradicted by the text that follows.
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jorblumeseaalmost 2 years ago
Do people really think they don&#x27;t need juniors because your IDE has a better auto complete? ChatGPT and LLMs are very cool but I&#x27;m surprised that people think like this. It just makes your juniors more productive and you can have them do more.<p>Github copilot and other tools help you scale up, not out. At the end of the day teams may be smaller, but someone needs to guide it.<p>I&#x27;m not sure what you do, but I can&#x27;t see it for most SWE jobs. These posts make me question whether people understand llms or have zero quality controls at their workplace.<p>It almost feels like every day people just make up wild stories that seem untrue.
meristohmalmost 2 years ago
Reading the responses here made me think of the slow food movement and maybe there&#x27;ll be a &quot;slow code&quot; movement, giving us back our time to really work through problems. Already there are young people who prefer to make phone calls rather than write; the pendulum swings back. I have an older co-worker who prefers to talk on the phone, I prefer asynchronous communication, and I can imagine having to adjust even further to synchronous voice comms if we bring on a younger co-worker. My point is that fashion is not just for clothing.<p>Regarding ethical AI, I recommend reading this, about five people raising concerns about how LLMs are developed and used:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rollingstone.com&#x2F;culture&#x2F;culture-features&#x2F;women-warnings-ai-danger-risk-before-chatgpt-1234804367&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.rollingstone.com&#x2F;culture&#x2F;culture-features&#x2F;women-...</a>
Neztebalmost 2 years ago
I use ChatGPT (with the paid GPT-4 model) for certain things when I&#x27;m stuck. I use it to explain&#x2F;rephrase concepts that I&#x27;m confused about. I occasionally generate some anonymized stuff like short code snippets, devops configs, boilerplate, and tests.<p>Are people using it to pump out full apps and services or what? Anytime I&#x27;ve tried that the result quality is poor, even after lengthy explanations of what I&#x27;m asking it to build. Sure, sometimes it saves a little bit of time, but sometimes it also wastes my time by giving me nonsense or never zoning in on what I&#x27;m asking for. I don&#x27;t see how people are becoming so much more &quot;productive&quot; with this, unless they&#x27;re mostly talking about stuff like non-code written content.<p>It doesn&#x27;t help that my company&#x27;s infosec policies forbid putting any proprietary data or code into these AI tools, hence why I only ever ask for short snippets.
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Jtsummersalmost 2 years ago
&gt; 1. Humans work 9-5 (or some schedule), but ChatGPT is available always and works instantly. Now, when I have some idea I want to try out - I start working on it immediately with the help of AI. Earlier I just used to put a note in the todo-list and stash it for the next day.<p>This is a time management problem and a setting boundaries problem. When I leave work, if I have an idea (work related) I jot it into a notebook to review the next day. After I leave (no later than 1630 every day) I am not obligated to work, so I don&#x27;t. I exercise, read, study, spend time with my wife, play with the cats, whatever I feel like doing. If they want me to work 24x7, they can increase my pay by 20x because they&#x27;ll only get a year of use out of me and I can retire with that income in a year or so without issue. They pay for 8 hours, they get 8 hours.<p>&gt; 2. The outputs with ChatGPT are so fast, that my &quot;review load&quot; is too high. At times it feels like we are working for ChatGPT and not the other way around.<p>Then slow down. See my response to (1). Your time management skills are in desperate need of development. Ask less of ChatGPT. Only ask enough to complete an objective, no more. Don&#x27;t ask it for information faster than you can process it. And if you feel the need to ask it a million and one questions, delegate processing its responses to others (bring back your juniors).<p>&gt; 3. ChatGPT has the habit of throwing new knowledge back at you. Google does that too, but this feels 10x of Google. Sometimes it is overwhelming. Good thing is we learn a lot, bad thing is that if often slows down our decision making.<p>&gt; 4. I tried to put a schedule to use it - but when everybody has access to this tech, I have a genuine fear of missing out.<p>FOMO is real, but like most fears it&#x27;s a waste. There is no existential crisis. You are not being chased by a bear, you appear to be a professional so you have steady income you know where your next meal is coming from and have shelter. Your fear is unwarranted, even if normal. Seek out counseling or therapy to learn how to manage fear and anxiety more effectively.
Havocalmost 2 years ago
&gt; Humans work 9-5 (or some schedule), but ChatGPT is available always and works instantly.<p>So don&#x27;t use it outside of work hours.<p>If you feel compelled to solve work problems outside of work hours that isn&#x27;t a ChatGPT issue. It&#x27;s just vanilla workaholism
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mupuff1234almost 2 years ago
What are you working on that&#x27;s so urgent?<p>The answer is probably that it&#x27;s not.
albert_ealmost 2 years ago
I have been staying mostly away from heavy use of ChatGPT so far. I have experimented and seen the potential. I also try to keep up on the tech news. Mostly been too busy with life and work to dabble seriously here so far.<p>But I am still experiencing the stress nevertheless.<p>The kind of burn-out I am experiencing is he probably opposite of yours in a way. I have been interested in Data and AI for a while since it is related to my area of work as well. Have been meaning to do a lot of hands on earning and experimentation in this space of GenAI ever since it blew up an year ago?<p>(But I, by nature, usually procrastinate on things and ideas, waiting for an ideal time -- where I am free of immediate priorities and distractions -- that rarely ever comes.)<p>The constant onslaught of new developments and new tools and frameworks and models keeps me feeling like I am stuck in quicksand with lead boots while all these developments are whizzing past me like a train I missed. This has been a cause of stress and mild anxiety for past many months, akin to burnout or helplessness.<p>(A part of me secretly wishes that the current flurry is just the initial mad rush with lot of trial and error -- and the real valuable learnings and fulfillment will come to those who start a little later -- once the dust settles and others burn themselves out. One can dream.)
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fbrnccialmost 2 years ago
I am in a similar position as you. And I feel like I am avoiding burnout by shifting the productivity ChatGPT provides me with to my own projects. I mainly work for clients as a independent contractor (web dev), initially they got A LOT more output from me, in the hours which I worked in. I stopped doing that, I actually started to reduce my hours, and gave them the same expected output. 8 hours billed usually where 4-6 hours of sitting behind my desk, now 8 hours billed are 2-4 hours. I would have expected to burn out by now, if all I did was client work; even if they paid me by my output.<p>Now, I have a mountain of free time, and all this free time goes into working alongside ChatGPT on my own startup. It&#x27;s a non-AI B2B app, where before ChatGPT I would have needed at least 2 other people working with me. Instead its just me, 8-12 hours per day, next to my work. Its absolutely NOT a work-life balance, but the potential in pay-off which is slowly starting to become realized (2nd B2B user signed on just yesterday), off-sets any fear of a burn out at the moment.<p>I often feel, that people who say, that ChatGPT can&#x27;t help them be productive, or makes them &quot;10%-20% more productive&quot;, are too far ahead of their own progression curve, or just don&#x27;t know how to prompt well. For me its easily a 2-5x productivity boost. I stopped talking with some friends who were constantly sending me ChatGPT memes or tricks to get AI to see weird things; its been ridiculous.<p>&gt; Personally, in my early 40s, I feel my brain is back in 20s.<p>I am nearing my 40&#x27;s now, and it feels the same.
syndicatedjellyalmost 2 years ago
I&#x27;m a mid-senior level engineer, and I experienced the following beginning in December, when I first start using ChatGPT:<p>December - January: I need to explore this brand new tool called ChatGPT. This could be as big of a game changer as Google must have been (was not in the workforce back then)<p>January - March: This thing is a TOTAL game changer. I can do work at a Senior+ level, when I was barely scraping by as a mid just a few months ago. I&#x27;m going to learn as much as I can as quickly as possible, using this new tool.<p>March - May: Uh oh. The team has new expectations of me. I&#x27;m sure I can deliver!<p>May - July: I don&#x27;t think I can deliver. I&#x27;m working constantly and feel burnt out.<p>====<p>Since July, I&#x27;ve changed projects to something less stressful (I work in consulting), as well as put a hard stop to computer-related activities after work hours. I&#x27;m slowly regaining my interest in programming again, after a few months of not even want to look at code.<p>In retrospect, I burned out myself because of the tremendous opportunity sitting right there with ChatGPT, and also the fear that all my peers will use the tool as religiously as I would and I may be out of a job if I don&#x27;t work at a breakneck pace to acquaint myself in this new tool. I wrote articles and spoke on podcasts about this new tool, just to demonstrate that I&#x27;m a (false) expert in this thing.<p>The lesson I learned is it&#x27;s okay to be exciting for new technology, but I should pace myself. Most of my peers will take a lot longer to get up to speed, so as long as I stay abreast of trends I&#x27;ll be just fine.
egoregorovalmost 2 years ago
I&#x27;ve been exposed more to pipeline automation than GPT4, like argoCI&#x2F;CD, and can see that taking away a lot of jobs. If customers are connected to the code repository then developers just need to push commits and argo will take care of the rest, including getting the latest code to the customer.<p>*This may be a bit of an oversimplification, but argo showed me that the whole pipeline can be automated
philwelchalmost 2 years ago
&gt; I no longer feel the need to hire juniors. This is a short-term positive and maybe a long-term negative…. A lot of stuff I used to delegate to fellow humans are now being delegated to ChatGPT. And I can get the results immediately and at any time I want.<p>In college, one of the classes I took was a basic digital circuit design class. How to build a CPU out of logic gates and things of that nature. A large part of the class was about minimizing a circuit using Karnaugh maps. The professor pointed out, however, that no one in industry actually does this anymore since the introduction of ESPRESSO in the 80’s. Before ESPRESSO, any chip designer would have some junior engineers slaving over Karnaugh maps all day to optimize their designs, but these engineers were replaced overnight by an algorithm.<p>Did this actually reduce the number of EE’s working in chip design? Maybe it did; I wouldn’t know. And obviously, GPT-4 is a much more general system than ESPRESSO. But it struck me as an interesting parallel.
keiferskialmost 2 years ago
Is ChatGPT 4 significantly better than 3.5? Because I am seeing it make basic, common sense errors that a person would never make. Things like, “Only give me results that fit this certain criteria.” Or “remove any results that are about X.” It repeatedly does the same mistakes over and over again, even after I point them out. This is in addition to just getting basic facts wrong.<p>And that’s not even mentioning the constant milquetoast disclaimer it has to give at the end of each answer - again, which it refuses to stop saying, even when I explicitly tell it to stop.<p>At this point I wouldn’t trust it to make me a cup of coffee, so I am a bit baffled by these threads. I have primarily found it to be useful when you’re using it as “text calculator” to reformat text, add commas to CSVs, etc. and even then it takes a lot of trial and error.
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dzhar11almost 2 years ago
I am in my late 30s ;) I understand you. We are... singularity. This good feeling when ChatGPT does what I want. I am working on my pet project and struggling to convince my friends and coworkers how cool my project is, but ChatGPT understands what I am doing and is ready to help. It reminds me of my addiction to online video games: World of Tanks, Team Fortress 2, PUBG, Dead by Daylight... It is a shot of dopamine when I win and anger when I lose. Burnout after some time... can&#x27;t play anymore, but I have to... Oh, I have wasted (or invested) a few full years (like when you add all hours on Steam and divide by hours in a year) in video games (instead of sleep). At least now I can feel when burnout is coming. I have learned when to stop. No magic. Just time.
garrickvanburenalmost 2 years ago
Maybe try going without ChatGPT for these tasks now - eg doing them yourself first?<p>My guess is the marginal difference between your abilities and ChatGPT is diminishing.<p>My experience with ChatGPT is it’s really good at generating non-controversial answers to well known topics.<p>Those are only so valuable.<p>Not as valuable as you creative abilities.
ulfwalmost 2 years ago
So you&#x27;re basically eliminating a bunch of jobs and are now starting a pity party on here that YOU are burned out?<p>As someone unemployed for a year, I feel so sorry for you. I hope you accept my tears for your burnout.
SergeAxalmost 2 years ago
The more I am reading about and from people being productive using LLMs, the more I think that most people are just lazy slackers. Any time I try to use LLM to solve my problems or deal with my tasks - it shows at most mediocre half-baked half-assed results.<p>The only thing ChatGPT is good for me is to replace Google for knowledge access. But I have to validate those answers in case they are hallucinated or just plain wrong.
jokethrowawayalmost 2 years ago
I have a similar issue all my life because when I think about something I just start creating it.<p>There is a simple solution but it requires willpower and a good dose of optimistic nihilism.<p>Nothing of what we do is that important, focus on living life in a way that pleases your imperfect self, not on chasing the next million dollar trend. If I count of all the chances I&#x27;ve missed millions on I could write a book about failure. I&#x27;m still able to live a good life so, why should I care if I have 10M in the bank? You don&#x27;t need anything, you just need to be content with what you have.<p>Even if AI plunges the developed world into chaos, you&#x27;ll still have the chance to escape on some remote mountain and farm goats. It doesn&#x27;t sound too bad.<p>Even if we get killed by an AI piloted robot army, did you really have a chance to make a difference? Enjoy not having problems when you&#x27;re not existing anymore.<p>Once you&#x27;re past your FOMO, controlling your screen time should be enough. It&#x27;s very important especially at night so you don&#x27;t wreck your sleep.
stevagealmost 2 years ago
Jesus. This is a kind of terrifying post. Feels like a pretty grim prediction of the world a couple of years from now as AI usage increases.
fl0kialmost 2 years ago
&gt; Personally, in my early 40s, I feel my brain is back in 20s.<p>Software like GPT should be a tool, not a crutch. There is a lot that people can do to maintain their mental acuity over the decades, and I know first-hand the difference between doing it and not doing it. Those who do nothing, and especially those that increasingly lean on crutches, soon learn just how much worse it can get. Even a genetically lucky brain can be squandered.<p>Watch the Huberman Lab podcast and ask yourself if you&#x27;d like the kind of mental acuity that 48yo Dr Andrew Huberman effortlessly demonstrates every single time. His worst off days are better than most people in their prime. That&#x27;s what is possible when people actually research and apply tools to improve their own health and abilities directly. There are a lot of rabbit holes this can go down, but just acknowledging it as an axis worth working on is the most important first step.
paulcolealmost 2 years ago
This is like that episode of Billions where they think they find the Limitless drug but it just makes them say nonsense.
mixmastamykalmost 2 years ago
Sounds like run-of-the-mill obsessive behaviors to me. My advice to you (and myself) is always enforced moderation. Whether food, alcohol, social media, etc.<p>I personally put limits on myself... no eating after ~9 PM, no internet after 11 PM via router block, etc. The latter I can&#x27;t undo until the next morning. Works well enough.
footyalmost 2 years ago
&gt; Calling myself a prompt-engineer sounds weird.<p>I&#x27;ll be honest, someone calling themself this sounds to me like someone with no self respect.<p>&gt; The only difference is that I can start trusting a human to improve, but I cannot expect ChatGPT to do so. Not that it is incapable, but because it is restricted by OpenAI.<p>Sounds like a good reason to hire juniors.
anonzzziesalmost 2 years ago
There is a lot of, let&#x27;s say, whining, in different communities that chatgpt deteriorated. This may or may not be the case; I haven&#x27;t noticed, but it could be. However copilot is really improving quite rapidly for us; now I rather <i>expect</i> it to write quite large swats of boring code for most of the team. And it does; often with an element of &#x27;perceived magic&#x27;, as in; I actually start typing something I have in my head only and it just gives me the code I was thinking of writing. Of course it gets that from context or clues, but even my colleagues with 3-4 years of experience don&#x27;t quite do that and definitely not as fast.<p>It&#x27;s great what small teams can do now because of this and the people who don&#x27;t use &#x2F; want to use &#x2F; cannot use it will fall behind quickly.
csomaralmost 2 years ago
Put the burn-out aside. It’s not time for such emotions. You are feeding data into GPT-4 and you are making it better but you are also losing everything else in the process: Your business. OpenAI now has access to how your business works, what you need, etc… It’s only a matter of time before OpenAI competes against you and they’ll win.<p>The only solution is to rely on open source models. The way to develop this market is to use it and pour money into it. I think everyone person, company, corporation or even government should chip in to this effort. If you pay $10 to OpenAI, you should pay $50 to a bunch of open source alternatives of your choosing.<p>This is the only way to make the world much less worse than what it is about to become.
coldteaalmost 2 years ago
&gt;<i>I tried to put a schedule to use it - but when everybody has access to this tech, I have a genuine fear of missing out.</i><p>The biggest fear should be missing out on life. Not some novel tech.
blitzballalmost 2 years ago
I am a lawyer who uses ChatGPT to assist in drafting documents. My clients are familiar with it too, but at the end of the day, clients are lazy, and would rely on the lawyer to draft something as simple as a cover letter or HR form. For those clients who pre-generate contracts and legal documents through ChatGPT, the result is astoundingly bad, such that I still had to overhaul their outputs.<p>Laziness and human incompetence -- these are the reasons why I exist.
gymbeauxalmost 2 years ago
My “burnout” is more like demotivation. I see a program that can do a lot or most of what I can do, and I’m like “what’s the point?” I could spend hours doing what ChatGPT can churn out in seconds… but typing out what I want ChatGPT to write, while technically more efficient than writing the code myself, is dull.<p>I’m exploring alternative careers and kind of want programming to just be a hobby.
falloutxalmost 2 years ago
I have literally no idea what you&#x27;re doing with ChatGPT. Like what can it do right now except generate spam.
huijzeralmost 2 years ago
&gt; ChatGPT has the habit of throwing new knowledge back at you. Google does that too, but this feels 10x of Google. Sometimes it is overwhelming. Good thing is we learn a lot, bad thing is that if often slows down our decision making.<p>I agree with this one. I find that spurts of work with ChatGPT can quickly exhaust my brain.
Baloogaalmost 2 years ago
An interesting video on the GDC YouTube channel [1] on generative AI. The speaker states that generative AI doesn&#x27;t raise the bar, rather it raises the floor.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fOqLuWml0UY">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=fOqLuWml0UY</a>
Dowwiealmost 2 years ago
I need you to share your typical day in excruciating detail, please.
andyfuturealmost 2 years ago
Our productivity is increased by ChatGPT but we increase workload as well. We have to work harder like our peers or competitors do.
atmosxalmost 2 years ago
Do we know of a company that makes money by _using_ LLMs for _something useful_ and not selling shovels during the golden rush?
littlestymaaralmost 2 years ago
&gt; ChatGPT makes us very productive. Personally, in my early 40s, I feel my brain is back in 20s.<p>Is it supposed to be a good thing?
ChrisArchitectalmost 2 years ago
Ask HN:
itronitronalmost 2 years ago
Maybe buy a juicer as well? I hear that is a pretty amazing technology, you just set it and forget it.