1 year ago I thought GPT style models were cool and useful, but nothing too revolutionary. I had tried copilot but that too felt like not an extreme advantage for typed languages over something like IntelliJ.
However, I have been trying GPT4 and seeing the rate of progress, and it all seems too much progression too fast. GPT4 is crazy good on all kinds of things (e.g. I asked it to make changes to python C internals to support some new language features and it came up with sensible changes). Unlike GPT3.5, I have so far not seen GPT4 just make up code functions. It hallucinates but the frequency seems much lesser. And with the pace that OpenAI is developing new things, it seems like it is even hard to predict what these models will be doing in 2 years.
Do you think we are witnessing the start of something with similar impact as the industrial revolution, but happening even faster and will dramatically change human civilisation?
This will enable many new business models, but the amount of paying customers may rapidly decline too, complicating matters. Blue collar workers (especially around the world), can to a large extent already be automated away (ordering screens at restaurants, arms deep frying chicken and putting it on a conveyor belt... e.g. workerless KFCs in Russia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cighS7cNvk or a Chinese restaurant in a rustbelt city my mom visited with a robotic waiter bringing food from the kitchen). Costs just have to decrease to make this feasible.
And at the current rate of improvement - friends in the field say many techniques from 2018 papers still aren't in production - I honestly doubt if even the top 5-10% of capable workers can truly keep up. It's horrifying and challenging...
But yes, this is all in the backdrop of a new revolution in industry!