Hacker News Reader

Comment by usaar333 | Hacker News Reader

> “In every previous automation threat, the automation was about automating the hard, dirty, repetitive jobs,” said Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

What an odd statement. Knowledge work has been automated for as long as I can remember. Compilers, automated QA, data entry, etc. In many fields, more labor demand resulted from productivity gains (software); in others, demand didn't rise to compensate (bookkeeping).

The question is where is additional demand going from higher savings given productivity boosts. I don't see more demand for HVAC technicians. Maybe dog walkers.

View on HN

But all the examples you gave (compilers, automated QA, data entry) fall firmly within the "repetitive" marker. These were all pretty much rote jobs where a person was essentially asked to be like a computer and follow a simple algorithm.

But ChatGPT is now killing jobs that are solely about creativity, like copywriting. That is a new, and rather unexpected, turn of events. I saw a good quote, I think it was on Twitter: "What kind of world have we built where the humans slave away at physically demanding jobs for minimum wage, while the computers write poetry and paint all day."

Yeah, before llms it was hardly imaginable that these jobs would someday be automated.

> jobs that are solely about creativity, like copywriting

But the point is that the kind of copywriting that CAN be replaced by ChatGPT is just as repetitive and non-creative than those other jobs.

Don't agree with that at all. If it were simply "repetitive and non-creative", why hire copywriters at all, why not just have the engineers or product managers write the copy?

I've worked with good copywriters, and was impressed with the quality of writing they did. The point is that ChatGPT excels at the type of creative writing that previously we thought was solely the domain of humans. I think you are getting things backwards if you think that because ChatGPT can do it that it is repetitive and non-creative.

"Knowledge" jobs have been automated a long time. Even before digital computers. Be it census or what. Then with computers insurance, banking and so on. This automation then moved to smaller and smaller companies.

Actually when you think about it, even clerical work was "automated" by printing press.

Automation of production of generic content is bit scary, but it might free up resources or just show what the truly value of that work was.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com