4 ms·

Amazing how these higher minded people always forget about the little people on the ground. All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good. N

Amazing how these higher minded people always forget about the little people on the ground. All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good. Not surprised an ethicist thinks like this.

tokai 3y ago
Highly educated AI specialists are the little people now? They can all find employment in an instant.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  Do you think every single person in OpenAI is an AI Phd? We are talking about 770 people, most of which are not rich and likely do not even own their own home. So yes, they are the little people. If you are going to potentially ruin the lives of 770 people you should have a better reason than being afraid of a chatbot and laundry buddy.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - BryantD 3y ago
    Given that two companies have open offers to OpenAI employees, it seems possible that the board accurately gauged the impact on human lives here. Also possible that they got lucky, of course.
  - Intralexical 3y ago
    Aside from those individuals being in-demand professionals with specialized experience from a big famous company, 770 people will be the least of our concerns if the social disruption from this stuff gets bad enough one day. Not surprised Hacker News identifies and sympathizes more with the software folks than with everyone else who has to live with the systems they build/disrupt, though.
    - brigadier132 3y ago
      > 770 people will be the least of our concerns if the social disruption from this stuff gets bad enough one day. Yeah, this is the common trend among these insane utilitarians like you and Helen Toner. It's all a game of "how can I justify doing heinous shit to people". IF a superintelligent AGI is created that is as disruptive as you imagine, it also means we find cures for diseases and solve many other potentially world ending problems (such as climate change). So since you brought up the hypothetical disruption of a technology that doesn't exist, can I now lay at your feet the blame for the millions of lives that are lost due to disease and climate change since we didn't move fast enough on AGI and advancing technology? This is why these absurd hysterical fear mongering arguments are worthless.
      - oatmeal1 3y ago
        False equivalence. The hysterics are all coming from you.
      - Intralexical 3y ago
        ??? Where did I say anything about a "superintelligence"? The extant statistical inference engines aren't going to build killer androids. No, I'm terrified of what profit-motivated humans are going to do to each other using machines designed to match patterns and generate convincing bullshit. Think less "Terminator", more like Cambridge Analytica, Russian-style firehose-of-falsehood, 2018 YouTube algorithmic radicalization, 2014 Facebook "emotional contagion" experiment, 2023 TikTok censorship, doctored videos/evidence, crossing an inflection point in declining trust in democratic institutions, fully automated fraud and identity theft in an arms race with increasingly invasive countermeasures, scientific atrophy, artistic and cultural homogenization, etc. FFS, the SGA and WGA just wrapped up an unprecedented strike motivated in large part by the broadly anticipated destructive impact of ML on their industry. You wanna talk about jobs? Wikipedia says that cost 45,000, many of whom were barely getting by, while you whinge about 770 in-demand professionals who already have highly paying offers from at least two Fortune 500 companies. From what I've seen, the voice acting industry, although less able to advocate for itself, is in disarray too and already directly impacted by the spread of models trained unconsensually on actors' past work. Plus major publications like CNET have already been caught canning their staff and dishonestly publishing error-ridden drivel with a misguided faith in LLMs, Google and thus access to most textual information online is basically useless because of SEO blogspam already, etc. Framing climate change as "we didn't move fast enough on AGI" is… Bizarre. Windmills ain't new tech, and neither are hydro dams, nuclear reactors, nor LRT. Framing disease as an "AGI" problem is… Delusional, as well. Some academics may certainly find domain-specific ML models useful, but were I a bit more vindictive, I'd pay good money to see you try to get ChatGPT to fold a novel protein correctly. > It's all a game of "how can I justify doing heinous shit to people".
  - ivancho 3y ago
    The jobs argument has always been the least supported argument about anything. Oh, we can't shut down this chemical plant dumping toxic garbage into the river, because then all those people at the plant will lose their jobs.
Merrill 3y ago
Ethicists seem mainly concerned about thwarting technology to ensure that no harm occurs, rather than guiding the development of technology to deliver the most benefits possible.
rizky05 3y ago
[dead]
nomel 3y ago
Given a choice between a paycheck and doing something questionable, and you have a looong history of what people will choose. I’m not saying that’s the case here, but that can’t be used as a shield.
- brigadier132 3y ago
  You really need very long hysterical fear mongering arguments to claim what openai employees are doing is morally questionable.
Fomite 3y ago
I mean, if you're worried about what these higher minded people are worried about, the number of employees at OpenAI is dwarfed by the number of other, more vulnerable employees threatened by this in the economy as a whole. That's one of the issues with both this and effective altruism as a concept - it's a series of just-so stories with a veneer of math.
Riverheart 3y ago
“All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good.” The same employees building technology that will ultimately put many more employees out of jobs? Ironic, because people say that jobs lost to AI will be for the greater good. I think we’re okay with sacrificing for greater goods as long as we aren’t the ones getting sacrificed.
doktrin 3y ago
> Microsoft has given every OpenAI employee a job offer. > All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good You penned both of these statements today. Clearly you understand that OpenAI employees are a highly compensated and in-demand resource whose “livelihoods” are in no jeopardy whatsoever, so the theatrics here are really bizarre.

tokai 3y ago

Highly educated AI specialists are the little people now? They can all find employment in an instant.

brigadier132 3y ago
Do you think every single person in OpenAI is an AI Phd? We are talking about 770 people, most of which are not rich and likely do not even own their own home. So yes, they are the little people. If you are going to potentially ruin the lives of 770 people you should have a better reason than being afraid of a chatbot and laundry buddy.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- BryantD 3y ago
  Given that two companies have open offers to OpenAI employees, it seems possible that the board accurately gauged the impact on human lives here. Also possible that they got lucky, of course.
- Intralexical 3y ago
  Aside from those individuals being in-demand professionals with specialized experience from a big famous company, 770 people will be the least of our concerns if the social disruption from this stuff gets bad enough one day. Not surprised Hacker News identifies and sympathizes more with the software folks than with everyone else who has to live with the systems they build/disrupt, though.
  - brigadier132 3y ago
    > 770 people will be the least of our concerns if the social disruption from this stuff gets bad enough one day. Yeah, this is the common trend among these insane utilitarians like you and Helen Toner. It's all a game of "how can I justify doing heinous shit to people". IF a superintelligent AGI is created that is as disruptive as you imagine, it also means we find cures for diseases and solve many other potentially world ending problems (such as climate change). So since you brought up the hypothetical disruption of a technology that doesn't exist, can I now lay at your feet the blame for the millions of lives that are lost due to disease and climate change since we didn't move fast enough on AGI and advancing technology? This is why these absurd hysterical fear mongering arguments are worthless.
    - oatmeal1 3y ago
      False equivalence. The hysterics are all coming from you.
    - Intralexical 3y ago
      ??? Where did I say anything about a "superintelligence"? The extant statistical inference engines aren't going to build killer androids. No, I'm terrified of what profit-motivated humans are going to do to each other using machines designed to match patterns and generate convincing bullshit. Think less "Terminator", more like Cambridge Analytica, Russian-style firehose-of-falsehood, 2018 YouTube algorithmic radicalization, 2014 Facebook "emotional contagion" experiment, 2023 TikTok censorship, doctored videos/evidence, crossing an inflection point in declining trust in democratic institutions, fully automated fraud and identity theft in an arms race with increasingly invasive countermeasures, scientific atrophy, artistic and cultural homogenization, etc. FFS, the SGA and WGA just wrapped up an unprecedented strike motivated in large part by the broadly anticipated destructive impact of ML on their industry. You wanna talk about jobs? Wikipedia says that cost 45,000, many of whom were barely getting by, while you whinge about 770 in-demand professionals who already have highly paying offers from at least two Fortune 500 companies. From what I've seen, the voice acting industry, although less able to advocate for itself, is in disarray too and already directly impacted by the spread of models trained unconsensually on actors' past work. Plus major publications like CNET have already been caught canning their staff and dishonestly publishing error-ridden drivel with a misguided faith in LLMs, Google and thus access to most textual information online is basically useless because of SEO blogspam already, etc. Framing climate change as "we didn't move fast enough on AGI" is… Bizarre. Windmills ain't new tech, and neither are hydro dams, nuclear reactors, nor LRT. Framing disease as an "AGI" problem is… Delusional, as well. Some academics may certainly find domain-specific ML models useful, but were I a bit more vindictive, I'd pay good money to see you try to get ChatGPT to fold a novel protein correctly. > It's all a game of "how can I justify doing heinous shit to people".
- ivancho 3y ago
  The jobs argument has always been the least supported argument about anything. Oh, we can't shut down this chemical plant dumping toxic garbage into the river, because then all those people at the plant will lose their jobs.

Merrill 3y ago

Ethicists seem mainly concerned about thwarting technology to ensure that no harm occurs, rather than guiding the development of technology to deliver the most benefits possible.

rizky05 3y ago

[dead]

nomel 3y ago

Given a choice between a paycheck and doing something questionable, and you have a looong history of what people will choose. I’m not saying that’s the case here, but that can’t be used as a shield.

brigadier132 3y ago
You really need very long hysterical fear mongering arguments to claim what openai employees are doing is morally questionable.

Fomite 3y ago

I mean, if you're worried about what these higher minded people are worried about, the number of employees at OpenAI is dwarfed by the number of other, more vulnerable employees threatened by this in the economy as a whole. That's one of the issues with both this and effective altruism as a concept - it's a series of just-so stories with a veneer of math.

Riverheart 3y ago

“All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good.” The same employees building technology that will ultimately put many more employees out of jobs? Ironic, because people say that jobs lost to AI will be for the greater good. I think we’re okay with sacrificing for greater goods as long as we aren’t the ones getting sacrificed.

doktrin 3y ago

> Microsoft has given every OpenAI employee a job offer. > All these employees losing their livelihoods for the greater good You penned both of these statements today. Clearly you understand that OpenAI employees are a highly compensated and in-demand resource whose “livelihoods” are in no jeopardy whatsoever, so the theatrics here are really bizarre.