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I edited the post to add the correct title (I didn't have enough characters to type out the entire title and forgot to add the correct title in the post). Part of my argument is against people who hide the fact that they were using AI and act as if the text/code/art was man-made.
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^Delta System Explained ^| ^Deltaboards >

The title of your view suggests that you AI would deter actual work. But then in the body of your view you state

[They] act as if they made it on their own when the actual work would take hours or even days.

If the end result is what the programmer, artist - whatever - desired, is that not actual work regardless of who or what did the work? For example, if a software engineer ends up with a working application exactly as they intended, then actual work has been done, and likely more quickly. It’s not skirting actual work, it’s using tools to work more efficiently.
However, there is the issue of authorship. Would it be sufficient to have a disclaimer stating that AI was used in the work? Maybe even list exactly what and where the AI did and what and where the human did? >

My biggest concern with these sorts of things is that students aren't learning how to solve problems anymore. These AIs are still designed by humans and have bias and fallibility. 
If students themselves don't learn the why and how, they're not going to recognize errors.
We already see this in engineering with Chegg. Students use it for homework and then kften struggle on tests. They haven't practiced working through problems.
In the real world in engineering you don't usually have a set problem with set inputs. You have to figure those out. Then you pick how to analyze that and whether the results make sense. 
If students become reliant on tools to do all of the actual problem solving,  it could lead to unintended consequences. It's why universities are so stringent about using calculators on exams and why you show your work. There are plenty of programs out there that can do all that for you, but you need to know they why and how to be effective and understanding and interpreting the results. 
If AI does everything, PE stamps become meaningless. Who's held to account when the bridge falls down? >

That’s not a problem with AI though. It’s a problem with academic dishonesty. There’s nothing preventing students from appropriately learning the material. >

Disagree. When grades are your end goal and your career is dictated by what job you're able to get and what salary, you're going to be motivated to keep those grades as high as possible.
If the single motivating factor was learning the material then you'd do that. But we reward right or wrong answers with a grade. If you were rewarded the same for struggling through the problem and getting the wrong answer people would be less likely to cheat. >

There might be a different type of a problem altogether.  When technology advances such that people can theoretically become much more productive, then this type of enhanced productivity will become more of the norm and would be expected of everyone.   So people might be expected to put forth 1 weeks of today's research/analysis/writing in couple of hours in the future with these new technology.  And it will be difficult for some people to adjust to this type of super productivity that is expected of everyone.  Instead of your boss wanting you to make a power point presentation file by end of the week, you might be expected to deliever 100 power point slides by couple of hours according to different styles.  And some of the super hard and smart workers will have 10-20 parallel AI's running doing different things at once, making everyone else look inefficient by comparison so people would have to adjust accordingly.  It is exhausting thinking about how busy people would need to multi-task with these tools. >

Reading your edited title, I’m still confused what the problem is.  What is the value of “actual work” that is lost by someone using ChatGPT instead?   People don’t get paid for the effort they put into something, they get paid for the output.
The main bad situation that I can envision is if someone who is paid by the hour for something lies about how long it took them to produce the output because they used AI but billed for a pre-AI human level of effort.   But that’s just fraud, not a problem of AI doing the work. >


Reading your edited title, I’m still confused what the problem is.  What is the value of “actual work” that is lost by someone using ChatGPT instead? People don’t get paid for the effort they put into something, they get paid for the output.

Technically, some artists do get paid by the hour, but only if they charge by the hour (but of course they can overestimate their work time and get more money).

The main bad situation that I can envision is if someone who is paid by the hour for something lies about how long it took them to produce the output because they used AI but billed for a pre-AI human level of effort.   But that’s just fraud, not a problem of AI doing the work.

Exactly. My arguments are:

Using AI to completely skip doing work will mean that you use your own skills less often (but that loss of skill is gonna affect only those who use AI, not those who don't use it). Plus, using AI text generators in learning/assignments completely misses the whole point of learning and counts as academic dishonesty, when people use those to write essays or answer problems
People can lie about whether they made their content or AI did, and until there is a fool-proof way to identify AI output, it will be hard to prove fraud, which you mentioned. >

But none of that is a problem with AI, that’s just people lying.
When you take your car into the shop, how do you know the shop isn’t using some new tool to speed up the repair but charging you for the same amount of labor that it used to take?   You have no idea, but people aren’t wringing their hands that a better socket wrench detracts from the “actual work.”   They just want their car repaired.
Part of the moral panic here, which is reflected in your comment, is that people come out of school with the wrong lessons about work.   Doing the work itself in school is important because the whole point is to learn, not the actual end product.    But people mistake the effort itself as the valuable part and then apply that to the professional world.   
The student who uses ChatGPT to cheat on assignments isn’t that different from every student who’s cheated on an assignment ever.   It absolutely counts as academic dishonesty, but that’s a problem with students who chose to be academically dishonest, not a problem with the existence of AI.
To your other examples, overcharging and passing off other people’s shitty work as your own is already endemic to the sorts of markets where AI is most likely to replace human labor.   It’s not a HUGE step change.   If you didn’t think it was worth spending much time worrying about freelance writers subcontracting to some dude in India, which has been a thing for decades, it’s probably not worth worrying about someone using ChatGPT to write content.    
On the other hand, there are plenty of times when it’s not that important to “use your own skills.”   When was the last time you did long division?   Did you ever worry your skills were atrophying vs someone who did it by hand?  Or do you just use the calculator? >


But none of that is a problem with AI, that’s just people lying

The problem is that it makes it easier to do all of that in art, academics, and coding (at least those are the three places where I know it is being misused). And on top of that, AI has the potential to drastically simplify it more than pretty much every other innovation. You don't see any new tech reducing car repair times by a factor of 10. But AI can reduce art creation durations by that much. >

You're still not explaining how doing all of these things a lot quicker than before is a bad thing. >

The comment I am replying to said:

But none of that is a problem with AI, that’s just people lying

I said:

The problem is that it makes it easier to do all of that in art, academics, and coding (at least those are the three places where I know it is being misused).

Why should it be easier for people to lie? Or did you mean "how doing all of these things a lot quicker than before is a bad thing"? I've already agreed that I was wrong when other people pointed out what I was not thinking about, and given deltas. >

Something that you're not considering is that the baseline of doing that work will change now that we have better tools.
Let's say that your mechanic charges you by the hour. If you ask him to replace a light, and he tells you that it will take 2 months of work, you will probably ask why. After all, most people wouldn't take more than a couple hours' work for the same output.
Well, it turns out that this guy will spend the first month crafting a super nice handmade screwdriver, then he will use that screwdriver once, made especially for your car, and then he'll throw it away. 
He'll spend another month crafting a nice lightbulb, especially tailored for your car.
The fact that he's crafting the tools and the items to repair your car himself does not make his work inherently better than the other guy who will just buy a normal lightbulb and replace it, does it? >

They are a replacement for doing actual work, in the sense that they eat up a chunk of the work to be done by a professional. Sure, no one's work can be entirely done by unattended AI right now, but the workloads of professionals can be trimmed substantially, which means that every human worker can take on more projects. 'More output per human' can balance out as 'more output generated' or 'less humans needed', or more likely a combination of both.

So yeah, the real problem as per my understanding isn't the existence of
 these tools, but the existence of people who write code, make essays, 
or generate art, and then spend a few minutes editing to make it look 
more human-like, and act as if they made it on their own when the actual
 work would take hours or even days.

When speaking about marketable work, particularly if you are employed by someone else, your methods don't matter. We need something in place, and we need no trouble from it, so as long as you install a piece of work there that works and does not breach copyright or any other law or regulation, noone cares if you carefully carved it out from a single piece of marble. >

This still doesn't really seem to be the case for writing. I've been playing around extensively with Chat-GPT.  I think for instance if I was writing a five page essay on some random topic for a school class. I would probably spend as much time getting Chat-GPT to give quality output (This involves quite a bit of feedback and asking it to redo things) as I would to just write it myself.
But there are two caveats to that. I'm a pretty fast typist and writer. I can generate quality output pretty quickly. And, secondly, I can generate quality output so I expect quality output to replace it.  If I were still a college student, and I just wanted a paper that could get me a D or maybe even a C minus, well You can get that out of chat GPT pretty much instantly. If you're the type of person who says good enough is good enough, then it's going to be much quicker than anything you could do yourself no matter how fast you are. >

I agree with what you said, but it doesn't apply to the case I was laying out precisely because homework is not marketable work. The goal of assigning you an essay is not to add that essay to the literary body, but that you go through the process of writing the essay to understand its subject better in the process. In homework, the creation process IS the value, whereas in work, the product is the value. >

Yes. I understand the value is in the process. But what I'm saying is that that value is also replaced.
For instance, writing essay helps you learn researching skills. So, because you need those researching skills, you write essays.
But, if the AI can write the essay for you, why do you need the researching skills? The AI becomes your personal researcher. Once, of course, we get to the point where they are reliable in terms of their ability to accurately summarize information and discern misinformation themselves. They won't be good essay writers until they can manage that. So when they're ready to replace humans for reading essays they'll also be ready to replace humans as researchers. At that point, Why do I need to know outmoded ways of researching when the AI itself is the primary way people will do research? Asking it to write the essay becomes the entire researching process and that's all people will eventually need to know how to do?
It doesn't just replace this one skill, it replaces all the skills that learning this skill required you to learn. >

I think the flaw in your argument is in the beginning:

For instance, writing essay helps you learn researching skills. So, because you need those researching skills, you write essays.

I don't see essays as a way to practice research (if that was the case, Wikipedia copypasting would be encouraged, not forbidden). Essays are a way to cultivate communication skills. If you have an idea and you can accurately and precisely put it into words, you can advance the body of knowledge of a given field. The idea of say, an essay about war X is not to verify that you can go online and copypaste a bunch of sources about War X into an unified document, but that you read those sources and write down what you understand about what you read.
You make an eloquent comment, but I don't see where I cannot replace 'AI' with 'big bro'. I have a big bro who can do my homework, why do I need the homeworking skills?
Answer is: you don't. You don't need researching skills, you need 'understanding and redacting a document that transmits your findings' skills.
You can think of it as the gym: the benefits of lifting a bar over your head are not that the bar is now higher or that you are now able to go around the world lifting bars, but that you change by doing it in a way that benefits you, and this change would not be accomplished by using a forklift to lift that bar. >


You can think of it as the gym

Sure. But in that case the analogy is more like a pill that lets you grow muscles just by taking the pill. Completely eliminating the point of going to the gym. At that point, you can't argue with that people are somehow cheating themselves because they're not going through the process. There would be lots of moral panic too about that. People would be saying oh no people won't learn how to do a push-up. But who cares? If nobody ever does a push-up again it won't hurt anything because in that world that's no longer a necessary thing to know how to do. >

That analogy would apply if prompting ChatGPT for an essay gave you the ability to enunciate your thoughts and ideas on written form. A more accurate analogy would be 'but bro what do I need muscles for if I have a machine that lifts for me'. >

No because essays aren't the muscles they're the weights.  The muscles are the skills to research make an essay and ability to write.  Once technology mitigates the need for either of those skills, then we don't need the skill that trains them either.  
Basically, once we all have telekinesis why do we need muscles?  We can just lift shit with our brain. >

What I have an issue with is that AI will mitigate the need to be able to express a thought. Again, my big bro can write my essay, he mitigates my need to research.
Also we are discussing the lame and mediocre form of research. How about scientific research? Running experiments, testing hypotheses and writing down your findings. Or what about philosophical texts? These cases are extending the body of knowledge, not pulling from it, so an AI model cannot produce what you need.
And I'm going further down in my case against it, since even if you would say 'what is the point on gaining this skill when I have this tool that does it for me?' and try to pass it as if it was the next calculator, there is a very important distinction that is easy to ignore, that makes ChatGPT more akin to having a butler that does your work: you don't have ChatGPT. Unlike graphic generation or voice generation models which source is released and replicable, GPT4 is massive and its source, and datasets, are not available to the public (and even if they were, the computing power and storage needed to run them are way beyond the reach of individual users). You cannot have a ChatGPT, you can only have access to the instance OpenAI are running for as long as they want, in the manner they want, and with the modifications they unilaterally put in place. You are basically making a case for delegating your brain function to an external corporation. So yes, you are not doing your homework because you can pay an external company to use their machine to produce a sub-par text that passes as your homework.
By the way, your first paragraph is agreeing with what I said before but for some reason you phrase it as being against it. Maybe you want to read again. >


How about scientific research?

That's a totally different beast than the type of research that goes into making an essay.  One is conducting original research and the other is simply summarizing the research done by others.  I don't think the former skill set actually builds on the latter in any way. 

very important distinction that is easy to ignore, that makes ChatGPT more akin to having a butler that does your work: you don't have ChatGPT.

I should point out that I'm not talking about chat GPT here. I am arguing about AI in a generalized sense. Chat GPT is not to the point where it can replace your ability to perform research. The essays that it generates can summarize topics very well, and could substitute for research, but only if the data within them was highly reliable. At this point it's only sort of reliable which is simply not good enough.
I'm not arguing that Chat-GPT is good enough, but this is not AI's final form. It will reach a point where it is ubiquitous and better than you and I.  It will reach a point where it will simply be as good as what any of us with seasoned researching skills and essay writing skills can perform, and even all of us will ultimately simply use it instead of doing the work ourselves because why not?
I'm suggesting that we will someday inhabit a world where nobody needs to know how to perform the type of research that goes into making an essay. Or, more accurately, AI tools will ultimately become the way that sort of research is done universally. So literally everyone will know how to do it.

By the way, your first paragraph is agreeing with what I said before but for some reason you phrase it as being against it. Maybe you want to read again.

I did, and I can't see what you mean. You proposed an analogy you think is more apt and I I offered a totally different one that I think is a better fit. I don't see how that's agreement. >

Why can't you say the same about any tool? E.g. would you view someone the same way if they used Python and NumPY, instead of coding it by hand in assembly? >

Well, now I no longer have the opinion that I shared in the title.
But, if I were to speak from that perspective and using the knowledge I had at that time, I would have said that even with Python and NumPy, you have to put the parts together to make the product, but with AI, the computer does everything after you tell it what exactly to do.
And nope, I do not agree with what I said just now. >

If anyone is curious, I fed this into ChatGPT:
"The real problem with Al art generators and chatbots like ChatGPT is the fact that they can be easily misused as a replacement for doing actual work instead of a tool to make better work possible by office employees, students, and artists, not the fact that those tools exist." 
Me: Do you agree or disagree with this statement and why? Give a detailed response that aligns with your decision. 
Bot: I agree with this statement. While language models like ChatGPT and AI art generators have the potential to greatly assist in creating and completing tasks, they should not be used as a replacement for human effort and creativity. Instead, they should be utilized as tools to enhance and improve upon the work that is done by office employees, students, and artists.
AI art generators, for example, can be used to generate ideas and inspiration for artists, but they should not be used to create finished pieces without human input. Similarly, language models like ChatGPT can assist in writing and research tasks, but they should not be used to replace the critical thinking and analysis that is required to complete those tasks effectively.
Furthermore, the misuse of these tools can lead to a lack of accountability and responsibility for the work being produced, as well as a lack of understanding of the underlying processes and techniques being used. This can ultimately lead to a decrease in the quality of the work produced and a lack of personal growth and development for those using the tools.
In summary, while AI-based tools like ChatGPT and AI art generators have great potential to improve work, it is important to use them as tools rather than replacements for human effort and creativity. Misuse of these tools can lead to a decrease in the quality of work produced and a lack of personal growth and development for those using the tools. >

The main arguments here in this comment are lack of responsibility (refuted by the fact that people will lie if they can and its their fault, not the AI's fault), and lack of personal growth/development (only affects the user, so it's not the AI's fault that its users are willing to use it). >

I have been using it to grow. It's like having a multidisciplinary team of professors that are open to engaging in conversation at a moments notice. One way it has helped me has been revisting some math concepts I always had trouble fully understanding. The way it can respond to nuanced questions really makes it powerful for education, especially in hard sciences. >

Yeah, I guess it can even actually promote growth, if you ask it to teach you. Unfortunately, many people will just ask it to give output and won't give two hoots about letting it help you grow by teaching you. >

Why is it a problem if people don't do actual work,if the result is good?
Like isn't that what all computer programs do?
Microsoft Excel can add up all your numbers and calculate percentages and draw a diagram.
How is that worse than adding everything up by hand and then drawing a diagram with pencil and paper?
Unnecessary work is not a good thing.