The thing that changed my view on LLMs was solo traveling for 6 months after leaving Microsoft. There were a lot of points on the trip where I was in a lot of trouble (severe food sickness, stolen items, missed flights) where I don't know how I would have solved those problems without chatGPT helping.
This is one of the most depressing things I have ever read on Hacker News. You claim to have become so de-actualized as a human being that you cannot fulfill the most basic items of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (food, health, personal security, shelter, transportation) without the aid of an LLM.
IDK I got really sick in a foreign country, I wasn't sure how to get to the hospital and I was alone in a hotel room. I don't really know how using chatgpt to help me isn't actualizing.
We used to have Google search and Google maps which solved this problem of finding information about symptoms and finding medical centers near you. LLM doesn’t make anything better it just confidently asserts things about medicine that may be wrong and always need to be verified with the real sources anyway.
Growing up in the internet age (I'm 28 now) it took me until well into my 20s to realize how many classes of problems can be solved in 30 seconds on a phone call vs hours on a computer.
The hotel owner eventually half carried me to the hospital because I got so weak from dehydration, though I'm glad I left my hotel room when I did I had difficulty avoiding fainting.
Rafael was the absolute best. He also made sure the hospital saw me right away since I was so weak. But once I was hooked up I used ChatGPT to scan the ivs they had me hooked up to since I had no idea what they were pumping into me since it was all in Spanish.
You said you solved problems with ChatGPT's help. You described a problem Rafael and hospital staff solved for you. And the problem you solved with ChatGPT could have been solved with a dictionary.
I guess this was very American of me, but when I was so sick I wanted to know if my travel insurance would cover the hospital stay. ChatGPT confirmed that it did, and told me to get to a hospital. Ultimately the hotel owner was the person who carried me to the hospital, but i wasn't lucid enough to read through my travel insurance's benefits pdf. I suppose I should have just gone to the hospital with or without insurance, but sometimes when you're very sick you don't think straight.
You said you used ChatGPT to help you get to the hospital. Then you said you used it to translate pharmaceutical names. Then you said you asked it about your travel insurance. These could be true together. But it says more of you than LLMs if you could not imagine how to solve any of these problems without LLMs.
Your travel insurance did not have emergency phone service?
LLMs are not reliable for medical advice or document questions.
I can't imagine being in this situation and thinking "I will ask ChatGPT" instead of "I will ask the people at the front desk of this hotel I'm staying at"
I saw a post on Reddit the other day where the user was posting screenshots from ChatGPT about how they were using ChatGPT as a “Human OS” and outsourcing all decisions and information to ChatGPT. It made me queasy.
god forbid you outsource easy things to technology - that's how humanity has been progressing since forever. but sure, throw away your calculator and do it by hand if that makes you feel any better.
Well, if your calculator has a loose wire that sometimes flips a random bit somewhere, you might find that a slide rule that is consistently correct has a certain value.
Extremely uncharitable reading. Plausibly they were in a foreign country where they didn't speak any of the language and didn't know how anything worked. This kind of situation was never easy for anyone.
I have been in situations where either I or someone in my party was sick and needed medical care in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language. In all cases I used my brain to figure out a solution quickly without the aid of CharGPT, and the trip continued on.
This falls in the category of life skills or maybe just "adulting." Sure, maybe ChatGPT can be considered a life skill, but you need others compiled into your brain to fall back on when it fails. If ChatGPT is the only skill you have, what do you do if your phone gets stolen?
What a strange thing to say.. ChatGPT is not a skill, its just a tool. It helps much faster and better than google searching. Why the fuss about it?
Would you say the same to someone using Google?
"Sure, maybe Google can be considered a life skill, but you need others compiled into your brain to fall back on when it fails. If Google is the only skill you have, what do you do if your phone gets stolen?"
Your post is actually one of the most patronising things I have read. The person just used ChatGPT like Google to solve their problems and your reply is about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs?
This is what people used to use Google for; I remember so many times between 2000-2020 that Google saved my bacon for exactly those things (travel plans, self-diagnosis, navigating local bureaucracies, etc.)
It's a sad commentary on the state of search results and the Internet now that ChatGPT is superior, particularly since pre-knowledge-panel/AI-overview Google was superior in several ways (not hallucinating, for one, and being able to triangulate multiple sources to tell the truth).
Severe food sickness? I know WebMD rightly gets a lot of hate, but this is one thing where it would be good for.
Stolen items? Depending on the items and the place, possibly police.
Missed flights? Customer service agent at the airport for your airline or call the airline help line.
