Nostalgic Jobs in the AI Era
Key Points
- The speaker defines “nostalgic jobs” as roles humans insist on keeping even when AI demonstrably outperforms them, and cites doctors as a prime example.
- Studies show GPT‑4 diagnoses correctly 90% of the time versus 74% for doctors, and doctors only improve to 76% when aided by AI, indicating a reluctance to trust AI’s superiority.
- In medical advice tasks, GPT‑4 provides longer, more accurate, and far more empathetic responses than doctors—45% of its answers are rated empathetic versus just 4% for physicians.
- Despite AI’s clear advantages, people still prefer human doctors for the personal, suffering‑shared experience, suggesting doctors will need to adapt by integrating AI rather than being replaced.
- A similar “nostalgic job” is poetry, where GPT‑3.5 can convincingly emulate the style of lesser‑known works by famous poets, challenging the notion that creative writing must remain a uniquely human domain.
Full Transcript
# Nostalgic Jobs in the AI Era **Source:** [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCPVWfMJST0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCPVWfMJST0) **Duration:** 00:07:04 ## Summary - The speaker defines “nostalgic jobs” as roles humans insist on keeping even when AI demonstrably outperforms them, and cites doctors as a prime example. - Studies show GPT‑4 diagnoses correctly 90% of the time versus 74% for doctors, and doctors only improve to 76% when aided by AI, indicating a reluctance to trust AI’s superiority. - In medical advice tasks, GPT‑4 provides longer, more accurate, and far more empathetic responses than doctors—45% of its answers are rated empathetic versus just 4% for physicians. - Despite AI’s clear advantages, people still prefer human doctors for the personal, suffering‑shared experience, suggesting doctors will need to adapt by integrating AI rather than being replaced. - A similar “nostalgic job” is poetry, where GPT‑3.5 can convincingly emulate the style of lesser‑known works by famous poets, challenging the notion that creative writing must remain a uniquely human domain. ## Sections - [00:00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCPVWfMJST0&t=0s) **Nostalgic Jobs: Doctors vs AI** - The speaker argues that doctors are a “nostalgic” profession—people insist on human doctors even though studies show AI (e.g., GPT‑4) outperforms them in diagnosis accuracy and medical advice. ## Full Transcript
I want to talk about three jobs that the
IMF would classify probably as nostalgic
jobs in the age of AI and we have
evidence that they're already nostalgic
jobs what does nostalgic mean it means a
job that humans want humans to do even
if AI is provably better at that job I'm
going to give you these three examples
based on recent studies the first one is
doctors yes doctors so I'm going to give
you two examples of how AI is better
than doctors number one is the diagnosis
case you want doctors to be able to tell
you what's wrong with you you trust them
to they go to medical school well in
this test gp4 was given a case history
and so were doctors they were both asked
for a diagnosis gp4 got it correct 90%
of the time doctors got it correct 74%
of the time and you think to yourself
doctors with AI that is the answer it is
not the answer my
friend doctors got it correct with AI
76% of the time 2% more than if they
were just using their own judgment which
suggests very strongly to me that
doctors are proud and do not want to
admit that the AI has a point and that
is going to have to
change another medical study same idea
in this case we're just answering
medical questions like the cross effects
of drugs can I take this with that Etc
so in this case a doctor was asked to
write an answer and Chad gp4 was asked
to write an answer Chad GPT 4's answers
were longer like much longer like 200
words versus roughly 50 words by the
doctor and medical professionals were
asked to assess the quality of the
answer and separately the empathy
demonstrated by the answer Chad GPT
crushed it at empathy it was 45% of chat
gpt's answers are rated as empathetic
versus 4% for doctors so the bedside
manner argument for human doctors
apparently gone you might think well
correctness maybe chat GPT doesn't know
all about this no Chad GPT got 80% of
the questions correct more than the
doctors and so here we are the chat GPT
is more empathetic it can answer
questions more correctly it diagnoses
better even with AI doctors still
struggle the clear answer is doctors go
away and AI rule the day no it's not and
the reason why is because as humans we
want someone who is suffered and who has
been sick to diagnose us I do not want
even reading this study and bringing it
to you I do not want a doctor who is not
human I do think doctors are going to
need to learn to work with AI but that's
a different day and another story a
second job that is a nostalgic job
poetry so a study was done where they
took less pop popular poems by very very
well-known artists like some Cher's less
well-known poems Emily Dickinson's less
well-known poems TS Elliots less
well-known poems and they paired those
with poems produced by I kid you not
Chad GPT 3.5 so this is not the new
writing release by 40 this is just
3.5 so they do all of that work they
pair the poems they tell 3.5 to write
five poems in the the same style as
these poems by choser and Dickinson that
are real but like in the back catalog on
the B
side humans can't tell the difference
and humans like the AI poems better and
the studies authors hypothesize this is
because I kid you not the poems are
worse so AI poems are direct they cut to
the point they have less subtext there's
less meaning there and humans like that
it's easier to get to it's like a
McDonald's Happy Meal you can just go
and get it I like my poems complicated
like wrestling with them and this
totally made sense to me because I've
done this test I have asked my AI to
write and this was 40 with the writing
update I asked it to write in the style
of a poet that I like could not do it
was not very convincing to my mind but
was it easy to understand yes was it a
poem yes did it have a style reminiscent
of that poet absolutely and so I think
this is going to be another example of
nostalgic jobs we are not going to stop
studying choser we are not going to stop
publishing and printing books by human
poets I would suggest we are more likely
to go to poetry readings because we know
a human wrote
it and so this is going to be a
nostalgic job third example art you
might think to yourself well AI art
right the fingers are all wrong so this
was a study done on 11,000 participants
and they did weight the scales they did
throw out some of the really obvious AI
art where like you have two legs off a
foot and stuff that's just goes wrong
and everyone knows what it is is and
they were left with pretty good-looking
AI art that mimic different styles so
digital style 2010s Impressionists Dutch
uh like verir Etc well great the
question was could the humans tell the
difference and what did the humans like
and the answer is that the humans could
a little bit tell the difference with
visual art 60% right on guessing which
was Ai and which was human generated
when they were in similar Styles but
that's just slightly better than chance
and the top two most liked pieces of Art
in the entire test they were AI
generated and I looked at them they're
quite
nice again I do not think this means
that artists are out of a job in fact I
think things like live painting and uh
exhibitions of human art are going to be
even more appreciated in person in the
future because you know that a human put
their soul into
it I think we're going to see a
commoditization of Art into multiple
classes which is something we've seen
since I don't know when like the 1950s
maybe I'm not an art historian but
fundamentally there's been this
bifurcation where there's High art that
we appreciate the humans made and
there's like industrial art that gets
put onto all the things we live and
breathe with every day I think
industrial art is going to be
commoditized into AI art your wallpaper
AI designed I'm sure your bedspread will
be AI designed I'm sure that kind of
thing is going to go to AI really
rapidly and Human Art is going to stay
Human Art invaluable so there you go
three jobs poet artist doctor all of
them AI arguably does better already by
the measure of humans
involved none of them I think are really
in danger of not existing anymore
because they are nostalgic jobs and I
want us to think more about that because
what we humans value we can continue to
invest in there you go tell me what you
think I'll link all the papers in the
description