Progress is exponential, human thought is linear
singularity_intensifies.gif
ChatGPT passed 1 million users in five days. By now, news of it must have reached everyone in any field adjacent to Computer Science.
So why is the media barely covering it yet? This should be THE top news story on every major newspaper. I am still surprised when I meet someone who works, say, as a copywriter, who hasn’t heard of it.
I understood why the implications are not obvious for everyone when I met a fellow coder at day 4 after launch (day 4 of the post-ChatGPT era).
I pushed him to try ChatGPT right there on his phone, and as soon as he did, his eyes opened up like 👀 and his brain was splattered all over the walls of that tiny London pub 🤯
The implications were immediately obvious: his job was at risk, and very, very soon. A matter of very few years.
"I can't believe the progress they've made in such a short time since GPT3", he said, and that is the key insight.
You've heard this before but here it is again: humans think linearly yet we live in exponential times.
These two pictures straight out of Tim Urban's genius illustrate what's coming for all of us.
This Wait But Why post (and part 2) from 2015 is the best material you'll find if you want to understand the world we live in and the world that's coming.
Right now you might be thinking to yourself, "ah well it's impressive but it gets this or that wrong, it makes some stuff up, not all the code it generates runs perfectly. Only very junior software engineers / copywriters / etc need worry."
In 12 months your job will be gone. 2 years more and 90% of knowledge jobs will be gone. 2 more years and we will have built the self-improving AI. [ballpark figures, ok? Just to make a point]
Like it or not, the Singularity is here.