It is very nearly the opposite to a calculator.

A calculator gives you exact results for a very small subset of problems (equations).

Chat-GPT will give you approximate (and occasionally incorrect) solutions to an extremely wide range of problems.

The main problem with AI is that there are only so many problems where an approximate solution is fine, and an incorrect solution is easy to work around. In order for AI to be broadly useful, it has to get to the point where it's correct more often than an expert human. It may well get there within the next couple of years, but this isn't a space LLMs are designed to be able to solve so it's not as guaranteed as a lot of people seem to think.

Disagree. For AI to be useful it needs to be better at the job than how the job currently being done.

We humans rely on thousands of things where an approximate solution is fine. Especially when it's about interacting with other humans.

Programming is an exception, but what % of the population are programmers and engineers?

Programmers, engineers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, builders, farmers, manufacturers, drivers (including pilots and ships captains), and scientists all need to be very precise in their work and mistakes will cause deaths (I have almost certainly forgotten some). This may not be the majority of workers by number, but these are the jobs civilization is _built_ on, they are the jobs that need to keep going no matter what or the whole house of cards collapses.

The majority of jobs that require less precision falls under the umbrella of artists (I will include advertisers here), people managers, and service workers.

I would put cooks into that too, allergic reactions can kill, badly cooked food can kill, and in fact people can be penalized for it too.

Ture but does it matter if the chicken is cooked for 10 minutes, 10 minutes 5 seconds, 10 minutes 10 seconds,... programming requires far more precision.

It does matter if you put some peanut in when the customer is allergic to peanuts.

That's the kind of thing you can solve with deterministic algorithm guardrails though.

In order for a system to be useful it doesn't need to match an expert human, it's sufficient if it can do most of the job. If companies can replace an entry-level person with something that's slightly worse but much cheaper, they're going to be widely used. In any profession where you have some sort of supervisor handing off tasks to unskilled humans and verifying their work, it will be broadly useful to hand those tasks to some AI model instead even if it needs a bit more handholding than humans, since it's going to be much cheaper than those humans and that is what makes something economically useful.

A "booster" is one who promotes something, not just an enthusiast. See "civic booster" or "athletic booster" for similar uses.

"Booster" can also now mean technologists who have correctly predicted the number and size of executive erections once teased with the idea of automating most of their office. Put on something black and tight, go up on stage and twirl around that notion until balled-up Jacksons grease the creaking floorboards. You know you'll be riding in a Cayenne tonight. Maybe a Boxster.

It actually sounds pretty familiar for those of us in the side shows for other Miracle Technologies That'll Fix Your Business, but it's a hell of a lot easier to set up a convincing model than something like SAP. Also, unlike ERP, GPT is a real thing, and it does real stuff, so that will make it easier to take the money. Real science is happening, which is always more fun, even if Homo Executivus uses it as a marital aid. I guess this makes me a Booster, but one of those old wrinkled Boosters who sounds like a carton of Newports.

Upvoted for being the kind of comment AI can’t yet write.