3 ms·
What I've realised is at a certain point companies grow to the size where for senior management to comptently do their job to the best of their abilities for wh
by that_guy_iain 3y ago
What I've realised is at a certain point companies grow to the size where for senior management to comptently do their job to the best of their abilities for what will benefit their company the most they need to reduce the amount they care about others.
This isn't meant to be a dig at them or say they're evil or whatnot. It just seems to be true. For example, a company I worked forced through a migration project that was just constantly going on and on. It was paralyzing the company so to speak. They couldn't do marketing drives, improve the product, make new deals, fullfill requests from clients, etc. Forcing through a half done migration obiviously screws pretty much all the folk who have to work on things. However, the company needed it done. The parent company wanted to sell and couldn't sell a company where the product is basically still in development with a big 18-month overdue project (it was scheduled for 3-months, whoever told anyone that was possible should have been fired). For the benefit of the company forcing through the migration made sense. They could start fullfilling client requests, sell the company, etc. But for the average worker, it meant a large amount of extra work with lots of things no longer working at all. One of the product managers told an account manager she would have to send invoices manually to 500 companies. Invoicing was broken. That's how broken this application was. But for the company, caring that you're overworking employees and increasing stress doesn't make sense in the short term. So from the employers point of view, forcing it through is what was needed. If they didn't they would have been fired. Fundamentally, they did the job they were paid for. To the detriment of the well being of others.
And I think the same is true here. For Altman to do what benefits OpenAI, he has to do things that are to the detriment of everyone else. The Regulations that the EU want to put in place will almost certainly in the future be seen as too weak. And they probably all make sense and Altman probably knows they do. But it's harmful for the company and he has a job to do. For him to be good at his job, he has to ingore what is benefical to everyone else and only care about what is benefical to the company.
- staunton 3y agoI generally agree (although I'm not sure if the example really illustrates it enough to justify it's length). However, this is an incomplete or misleading view on three counts. First, it sounds like you're justifyimg immortal behavior, which I think wasn't your intention, but the wording isn't so clear on that. The same argument can be given (and would apply) to saying a concentration camp guard has to do what they do in order to "be good at the job". That is a relevant explanation of an important dynamic at play. It doesn't make it OK. Second, being a scumbag has a cost (e.g. reputation) even from the cold-hearted and immoral poit of view of disembodied money. Society controls this calculation and is not powerless against it. Third, disembodied money has no agency. Concretely, the mechanism is a manifestation of diffusion of (moral) responsibility. The board and shareholders are not absolved from moral responsibility by some divine right to make maximum profit on their investment. Neither are they justified in ignoring the responsibility they have by diffusing it, neither by choice nor carelessness and willful ignorance.