14 ms·

I was wrong about the ethics crisis

• kelseyfrog 2y ago
  Our intelligence agencies have long recognized that individuals burdened by debt are vulnerable to coercion and manipulation. It's time we acknowledge that the H1-B visa program creates a similar dynamic. The program’s restrictive rules effectively hang over visa holders like the sword of Damocles, leaving them perpetually at risk and easily controlled. We’ve already seen how Twitter, under Musk’s leadership, has exploited this system to erode user protections in favor of appeasing his ego. When such moral compromises are normalized at the top, their effects inevitably cascade downward, influencing broader organizational norms and behaviors.
  • ralfd 2y ago
    What „user protections“ were eroded at Twitter/X? Or do you just mean it became less woke?
    • rrix2 2y ago
      just yesterday the owner of twitter was getting his employees to delete the accounts of posts he disagreed with
      • lazyeye 2y ago
        What do you mean?
        • DonHopkins 2y ago
          Pretending to be ignorant doesn't change the facts, reinforce your point, or bolster your ridiculous argument that Musk supports free speech. You couldn't possibly be more wrong, and pretending to be ignorant doesn't make you right. You have access to the same internet everyone else does. Look it up yourself instead of trying to argue with people who are paying attention and put in the time to be informed. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/27/musk-x-loomer-h1b-maga-verification https://www.axios.com/2024/12/27/musk-x-loomer-h1b-maga-veri... MAGA vs. Musk: Right-wing critics allege censorship, loss of X badges. A handful of conservative critics of Elon Musk are alleging censorship and claiming they were stripped of their verification badges on X after challenging his views on H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers.
          • WillPostForFood 2y ago
            You want to go on the record support Laura Loomer as a credible source? Nothing in the article about account deletions, and nothing but one notorior crank claiming, without evidence, they are being censored.
            • DonHopkins 2y ago
              Laura Loomer's credibility isn't the issue. It's already quite well established and non-debatable that despite hypocritically gaslighting and declaring himself a "Free Speech Absolutist", that he is so thin-skinned and anti-free-speech that he shadowbans, demonetizes, and kicks off many many people he doesn't agree with, and promotes and amplifies the White Supremacists and Nazis and racists he does agree with, and he doesn't support anyone's free speech except his own. The thing about him censoring Laura Loomer only illustrates what a ridiculous point it's gotten to. It's not his censorship and anti-free-speech she's complaining about, it's that it's now to a point that it finally applies to her. She's not against leopards eating people's faces, she's just against leopards eating HER face. If you still believe Elon Musk supports free speech because you're skeptical of Laura Loomer, you're just as gullible and ignorant and dishonest and unethical as she is. Of course, just like Musk and Loomer, you're not even arguing in good faith, since your own words prove you obviously didn't read the article. You said "Nothing in the article about account deletions, and nothing but one notorior crank claiming, without evidence, they are being censored.", but right up at the top the article clearly states that THREE people were complaining, and he's deleted or threatened to delete the accounts of several other people and organizations: >Driving the news: Trump's conspiracy-minded ally Laura Loomer, New York Young Republican Club president Gavin Wax and InfoWars host Owen Shroyer all said their verification badges disappeared after they criticized Musk's support for H-1B visas, railed against Indian culture and attacked Ramaswamy, Musk's DOGE co-chair. And also: >He threatened to reassign NPR's account handle last year and marked some links to the site as "unsafe" when users click through. >Musk also removed the verification badge of The New York Times in 2023. >X also suspended independent journalist Ken Klippenstein's account after he shared Sen. JD Vance's vetting document from the alleged Iranian hack of Trump's campaign. And as someone who's not arguing in good faith, you know very well it's absolutely true Elon Musk doesn't support free speech, and the list of people and organizations he's banned or demonetized because he doesn't approve of THEIR free speech goes on and on, and there's nowhere near enough room in a typical article or attention span in a typical reader to list them all. You have a lot of nerve to be that blatantly dishonest in a discussion about ethics. But you're so intellectually lazy, you didn't even read the article you're facetiously pretending to have read, so don't demand other people write and read exhaustive 50 page well researched detailed articles enumerating every fact and scrap of evidence for you, if you're too lazy to read a one page article yourself. Because you risk embarrassing yourself again by having your own words and the article's words quoted back to you in juxtaposition.
      • warkdarrior 2y ago
        How is that unethical? X is Musk's toy to do with as he pleases. You as a user of X need to understand that he has absolutely no responsibility to you as a user.
        • kelseyfrog 2y ago
          Any time there are consequences to actions, the matter of ethics arises. The very act of making decisions that have consequences demands responsibility. This is the reality of being human. Whether you or anyone else organize consequences as meaningful or not is a moral abdication. The first thing an immoral person does is justifying the consequences of their actions as inconsequential. This happens to such a degree that doing so is a signal of immorality. Immorality doesn't look like choosing evil, it looks like choosing inconsequentialism.
        • Uehreka 2y ago
          (Regina George voice) So you agree? There are no “user protections” on X?
        • WarOnPrivacy 2y ago
          > How is that unethical? X is Musk's toy to do with as he pleases. I offer that that rights aren't ethics. Musk has a reasonable right to censor speech on his platform that he doesn't agree with. However, when someone establishes themselves as a free speech absolutist, it is arguably unethical for them to remove, suppress and continually work to eliminate speech they disagree with.
        • metabagel 2y ago
          Your statement is basically “might makes right”, which is antithetical to ethics.
      • StanislavPetrov 2y ago
        I'm no fan of Musk but this is has been standard practice at Twitter since it was founded. They are just using slightly different "standards" to decide who to delete/suppress/shadowban.
        • bdangubic 2y ago
          you can’t be that naive… he bought it apparently for “free speech reasons” which he repeats every chance he gets (even on the same day he is silencing his critics). Xi Jinping is more for free speech than Elon is :)
        • metabagel 2y ago
          Moderation isn’t censorship. The previous site was pretty well moderated. The current site is pretty awful, and the site owner is capricious about meting out punishment to those who offend him. It’s all personal, whereas before it was based on moderation policy.
          • tbrownaw 2y ago
            > Moderation isn’t censorship. Yes it is, it's just censorship that (most of) the people who would have heard whatever's being censored want.
          • deleted 2y ago
            [deleted]
      • fsckboy 2y ago
        what hypocrisy! it's like my alcoholic doctor telling me I need to cut my drinking: his advice may be sound, but it's rich coming from him. I'm referring to the people who denied or did not decry the previous twitter administration deleting huge volumes of tweets they didn't like, the people who now populate bluesky and the fediverse they themselves are quite open about saying, because it's a cozy little echo chamber world where the people who disagree are erased from their view
        • wrs 2y ago
          The previous Twitter administration was quite open about the censorship they were doing and the reasons they did it. You may not like the result, but at least they tried to deal with their inherent conflict of interest (commerce vs. societal good) in a thoughtful way. The current one, on the other hand, constantly trumpets its free-speech absolutism while Elon tells the staff to delete whatever he wants whenever he wakes up in a bad mood, and artificially boost his own trolling.
          • fsckboy 2y ago
            >The previous Twitter administration was quite open about the censorship they were doing and the reasons they did it that is completely false. you should work on developing respect for the opposing views of people of honest intent.
            • wrs 2y ago
              I doubt it's completely false. So...same to you, I guess.
        • metabagel 2y ago
          Moderation isn’t censorship. Many comments are “killed” on this very website. You can see them with the “show dead” option.
          • fsckboy 2y ago
            censoring evidence of covid gain of function research and subsequent lab leak is not moderation shadowbanning which stops people from seeing content is also censorship, you're wrong (and don't confuse mix this site with twitter either)
  • Swizec 2y ago
    > It's time we acknowledge that the H1-B visa program creates a similar dynamic. The program’s restrictive rules effectively hang over visa holders like the sword of Damocles, leaving them perpetually at risk and easily controlled. This is why I went through the pain and cost of sponsoring my own O1 and later EB instead of relying on an employer or spousal visa. You just cannot be a full participant with someone who can get you kicked out of the country on 10 day notice.
  • Simon_O_Rourke 2y ago
    > leaving them perpetually at risk and easily controlled. I'd use a stronger term here, for some more nefarious companies can both exploit and abuse employees on a H1b visa limitation. Now go work 60 hour weeks for less than your peers!!
    • kelseyfrog 2y ago
      I worked it back from stronger language originally in the hope that it would be more easily palatable. I completely agree with your point
  • abduhl 2y ago
    What is the relationship between this blog post and the H1-B visa program? And are you saying that Twitter has exploited the H-1B program to erode user protections? It seems like you're just trying to shoehorn some kind of unrelated anti-Musk sentiment into a discussion that has nothing to do with H-1B visas or Elon Musk?
    • swiftcoder 2y ago
      No, they (and every other BigTech) exploit it to erode worker protections. Which in turn contributes to eroding user protections, since unprotected workers aren't really in a position to put up a fight when management tells them to do something unethical.
      • umeshunni 2y ago
        That's some serious leaps of logic there.
  • chaps 2y ago
    Around the time I was born, my dad was in the army and was taught in an intelligence class that "financial problems" is one of the most exploitable facets of a person by nation states. I don't really know much about his work, but it sounded like his role was particularly at-risk from nation states trying to pull information from him. What's interesting though is that around that time we basically had no money and support from the military! We lived in a roach-infested home and barely had money for groceries! It absolutely blows me away that my family could barely support itself considering the known-and-taught risks of such a situation. When he told me about that I asked him why they didn't pay the family more, considering the risks. He hadn't considered it even once before that conversation.
  • lazyeye 2y ago
    Couldn't disagree more about Elon. I'm just glad there was someone able to open up free speech again on a social media platform and reveal for all to see the level of censorship (by surrogacy) by the govt.I think we might be in a very dark place indeed if this level of govt corruption was allowed to persist for even a few more years.
    • DonHopkins 2y ago
      What a terribly unfortunate time for you to foolishly choose to die on that particular of hill trying to defend Elon Musk's dedication to free speech. It says as much about your lack of situational awareness and tenuous grasp of reality and current events, as it does about Elon Musk's thin skinned hypocrisy and contempt for the free speech of anyone but himself. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-accused-censoring-laura-loomer-maga-republicans-x-rcna185569 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/elon-musk-accused-... >Elon Musk accused of censoring conservatives on X who disagree with him about immigration. The claims came after Elon Musk was involved in a public feud with some Republicans over immigration.
    • trallnag 2y ago
      Image boards like 4chan are quite free, even without Elon
    • webdoodle 2y ago
      > I'm just glad there was someone able to open up free speech again on a social media platform It ain't free if someone can buy it.
      • sieabahlpark 2y ago
        [dead]
    • bilbo0s 2y ago
      Huh? There is still censorship by surrogacy. It’s just that now they censor things you don’t like being said, so you don’t mind as much. For you it’s not a problem as long as the people being censored have a world view or narrative contrary to your own. But that’s not the same as being a free speech supporter. That’s being a supporter of free speech for you. Not for anyone else.
  • eh_why_not 2y ago
    > It's time we acknowledge that the H1-B visa program creates a similar dynamic....leaving them perpetually at risk and easily controlled. By associating this to the subject of the post, are you implying that the perpetrators of unethical tech in the U.S. are mainly foreign workers, and not "homegrown" citizens?
    • kelseyfrog 2y ago
      No, to interpret it in a way that suggests that's it's mainly foreign workers would be extrapolating beyond what I said. I believe the worker-employee dynamic is fundamentally unbalanced[1] in favor of employer leverage over employees. I simply believe that this same dynamic is exaggerated when it comes to H1-B workers. It's simply easier to examine a social relation when it's more apparent. 1. Workers' choice of employment does not come close to ameliorating the disadvantage. Every argument against this is a coping mechanism.
      • eh_why_not 2y ago
        Thanks for clarifying.
  • janalsncm 2y ago
    > perpetually at risk and easily controlled I would like to see two changes. One, better oversight of the job categories and their prevailing wage (no more creating new categories with low wages). Two, more freedom for the immigrant to switch jobs at will so long as their job family doesn’t change. These changes are pro-worker (both resident and immigrant) because they remove the main benefits of hiring foreign labor and prevent undercutting wages. They are changes that I believe SWEs as a class should be in favor of.
• vunderba 2y ago
  From the article: > But I have yet, until now, to point at the elephant in the room and ask whether it is ethical to work for Big Tech, taking all of the above into consideration. People often highlight "boycotting" as the most effective action an individual can take to drive change, but for those who work in tech, the most powerful message you can send is denying your labor. To me, this isn’t even about whether "Big Tech" companies are ethical; it’s a matter of ideological principle. FAANG companies already wield far too much power, and I refuse to contribute to that imbalance.
  • parpfish 2y ago
    Wouldnt it be even more effective to take a job there and provide them half assed labor?
    • baobun 2y ago
      No. How do you think we got here? Turns out network effect can compensate for a lot of incompetence and lethargy. Many (most?) big tech engineers are likely already cruising. Try do something you actually believe is good instead of coping by telling yourself you are intentionally failing to do something bad.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
      I would consider that unethical, and would not do it. For many reasons, I live a life of extremely rigorous personal ethics. I don’t insist that others do the same, but I do need to protect myself from others that assume my ethical stance to be weakness. For example; I make it a point to always keep my word. Unethical folks that know this of me, are constantly trying to get me to make commitments, without divulging the costs to me, or the boundaries of said commitments. It’s my responsibility to make sure that I have full disclosure, before making a commitment. Many people become quite jaded and misanthropic, when faced with this. I tend to find it amusing, watching people try weaseling out of giving full information. Often, these efforts tell me more about things, than full disclosure up front will. I like people, and can call some really rapacious bastards friend. My ethical stance is truly entirely personal, and I have worked closely, with some spectacularly flawed people. Scott Adams (He Whose Name Has Been Struck From The Lists) wrote an extremely cynical book, called The Way of the Weasel, which is downright prescient.
• Gimpei 2y ago
  I dunno. I’m kind of with the sentiment in his original column, or at least how he paraphrased it. I think it’s naive to believe that you can bring about any real change in tech through moral suasion alone. The monetary payoffs are too large and there are too many people who will work for them no matter what. If you want to change some behavior that you find immoral, your best bet is to organize politically and pass laws.
  • swiftcoder 2y ago
    > there are too many people who will work for them no matter what BigTech was already struggling to hire the caliber of engineers they needed when I worked there (and I left 5 years ago), and a fair number of the best candidates were refusing on ethical grounds (in that era, mostly around Cambridge Analytic and Facebook's involvement in Myanmar, but also due to concerns about blatant marketing to teens). I don't think it's a given that these companies can maintain a staff of thousands of top-tier engineers as they sink themselves ever deeper into the various ethical quagmires.
  • epgui 2y ago
    I think you totally misunderstand what he is saying. You can’t make people do things with ethics. That’s not what ethics is for, and that’s not what he is talking about.
• zitterbewegung 2y ago
  The person is arguing whether it is good or bad to work for Big Tech. I wouldn't hate the players when you really should hate the game. Most of the populace is largely unaware of surveillance or why they are using products that have a negative influence. Stopping to work for Big Tech does not change this lack of education. Advocating that privacy should be respected or even supporting laws that would regulate large technology companies has been attempted to be implemented by the ACLU and EFF, but it isn’t really practical when you can hire lobbyists for around $1 million dollars, which you can use to get passed nearly anything you want. Also, Big Tech may need fewer people to achieve its goals, so I think this post is too little and too late.
  • swiftcoder 2y ago
    > Also, Big Tech may need fewer people to achieve its goals Someone has drunk the ChatGPT-will-replace-$500,000-engineers koolaid, I see
• ivjw 2y ago
  I agree with the author that questions of ethics are social optimization problems. > We must balance optimizing for oneself with optimizing for others Yet if each person would optimize for themself, then the balancing is automatically taken care of. The invisible hand is even more free and dexterous on the social scale than the economic. > the belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis. In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure. The power of the free market is at least as theoretically and empirically sound as the climate crisis.
  • epgui 2y ago
    I think this is naive, because a flaw of such free market thinking is its failure to price in externalities. That’s what the relationship with the climate crisis link was about.
    • ivjw 2y ago
      How is the environment, which is directly of concern to the primary economic sector, and to the entire economic enterprise in the long run, an externality?
      • epgui 2y ago
        It’s actually the classic textbook example. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/externality.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/externality.asp
        • ivjw 2y ago
          Unless you are studying an a priori science, textbook examples are pedagogical simplifications. Yes, the cost of environmental pollution is paid neither by factories nor their customers, yet both suffer the consequences, and as such are not "uninvolved" with the third party, as the definition goes.
          • 2y ago
• uikoleawrfgolmp 2y ago
  > Is Big Tech supporting the public good, and if not, what should Big Tech workers do about it? The problem is not if Big Tech does support or does not support something. The problem is they have any opinion at all! The pitch is they are "platforms" and "arbiters" who decide like highest court. They should not have any opinions at all! All this oligopoly needs to be dissolved!
• Townley 2y ago
  > All of us must navigate the trade-off between “me” and “we.” A famous Talmudic quote states: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?” We must balance optimizing for oneself with optimizing for others, including the public good... To take an extreme example, Big Tobacco surely does not support the public good, and most of us would agree that it is unethical to work for Big Tobacco. The question, thus, is whether Big Tech is supporting the public good, and if not, what should Big Tech workers do about it. The duty to align your professional life ethically scales with your ability to do so. I personally don't cast aspersions on anyone working in tobacco farms or in a gas station selling cigarettes; they're just trying to get by. But if you're one or two levels up Maslow's Pyramid, it's right to weigh your personal needs against the impact of your work. You'll also be better off for it, knowing that the world would be worse off if you decided to switch gears and become a carpenter/baker/bartender/choose your adventure. I'll also say: there are ways to contribute morally outside of your 9-5. Volunteer to teach a neighborhood kid to code. Show your local sandwich shop how to set their hours online, or maybe even build them a cookie cutter Squarespace site. Donate a small fraction of your salary (eg 0.5% local, 0.5% global) to causes you believe in, and scale up over the years.
  • equestria 2y ago
    That last part makes me a bit nervous. It's dangerously close to the EA belief that it's actually OK to be a ruthless exec for a tobacco company, because you can do good things with your money that you wouldn't be able to do if you quit the job. I don't think that's the point you're making, but it's good to be careful with that. You can do good after hours, but it doesn't absolve you from what you're doing 9-to-5. As to your first point: yes, but it's all relative. Most tech workers are "trying to get by" in their minds. Just look at the SFBA rents and the PG&E bills! And wait until you hear about their college loans... most people in the top 1% don't think about themselves as the top 1%. In the end, making good decisions often requires sacrifice, pretty much no matter how much you make. And we often find ways to rationalize why it's not the right time for that.
    • adamtaylor_13 2y ago
      But if you won’t be the big tabacco exec, someone else will. So I actually agree with the notion that being the big tabacco exec and doing good things with your money, plus helping steer things from the inside is a better proposition than becoming a baker and letting someone who has NO moral qualms with tabacco run the ship. It’s rarely as effective to push change from the outside as it is the inside.
• bhouston 2y ago
  And he doesn't even get around to mentioning that Google (and Amazon) are providing AI computing to Israel even though Google's own lawyer warned that they could be used to violate human rights. Their lawyers wrote: "Google Cloud services could be used for, or linked to, the facilitation of human rights violations, including Israeli activity in the West Bank.” It gets worse, they got advice and then didn't follow it: "Google reportedly sought input from consultants including the firm Business for Social Responsibility (BSR). Consultants apparently recommended that the contract bar the sale and use of its AI tools to the Israeli military 'and other sensitive customers,' the report says. Ultimately, the [Google] contract reportedly didn’t reflect those recommendations." https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/3/24311951/google-project-nimbus-internal-documents https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/3/24311951/google-project-n... The end result is Lavender which HRW details here: https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/10/questions-and-answers-israeli-militarys-use-digital-tools-gaza https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/09/10/questions-and-answers-is...
• arghandugh 2y ago
  Big Tech subverted the world’s longest running democracy and tipped a majority of the global population into authoritarian rule. An essay handwringing the question doesn’t seem very useful at this point.
  • lazyeye 2y ago
    The govt was changed despite big tech not because of it. And the majority of people disagree with your characterization of "authoritarian rule".
    • metabagel 2y ago
      Trump didn’t win a majority of those who voted, let alone the idea that a majority of the country supports him.
      • lazyeye 2y ago
        I guess the yardstick I was using was winning the popular vote and all the swing states. What yardstick are you using?
  • rexpop 2y ago
    In light of these contexts, what would you rather see at the top of HN?
  • richrichie 2y ago
    Is that why people overwhelmingly voted for change in 2024, ironically to bring back the “dictator”? Popular mandate, all of swing states, majority of governorships, house and the senate - seems as decisive a democratic choice as it can get!
    • int_19h 2y ago
      FWIW, Putin was also overwhelmingly elected by people "voting for change" back in the day.
• mgobl 2y ago
  Not only do I disagree with the premise, but I think the article is poorly argued. Was working on the Manhattan project unethical because it furnished the ability for us to kill humans on an even more vast industrial scale than we previously could have imagined? Perhaps, but it's hard to square this with the reality that the capability of mutually assured destruction has ushered in the longest period of relative peace and global stability in recorded history, during a period of time we might otherwise expect dramatically increased conflict and strife (because we are sharing our limited planet with an additional order of magnitude of humans). Had everyone at Los Alamos boycotted the effort, would we be in a better place when some other power inevitably invented the atomic bomb? Somehow I doubt it. The world is a complex system. While there are hopefully an expanding set of core "values" that we collectively believe in, any single person is going to be challenged by conflicting values at times. This is like the Kagan stages of psychological development [1], but societally. I can believe that it's net bad for society that someone is working on a cigarette manufacturing line, without personally holding them accountable for the ills that are downstream of their work. There are competing systems (family, society) that place competing values (good - we can afford to live, bad - other people get sick and die) on the exact same work. If people want to boycott some types of work, more power to them, but I don't think the line between "ethical" and "unethical" tasks is so clear that you can put whole corporations on one side or another of that line. Sometimes I try and put a dollar amount on how much value I have received from Google in my lifetime. I've used their products for at least 20 years. Tens of thousands of dollars seems like an accurate estimate. I'm happy to recognize that two things are true: that there are societal problems with some big tech businesses that we would collectively benefit from solving AND that I (and millions of other people less fortunate than me, that couldn't "afford" the non-ad-supported cost of these services) have benefited tremendously from the existence of Google and its ilk. [1]: https://imgur.com/a/LSkzutj https://imgur.com/a/LSkzutj
  • g-b-r 2y ago
    > that I (and millions of other people less fortunate than me, that couldn't "afford" the non-ad-supported cost of these services) have benefited tremendously from the existence of Google and its ilk. People who were into Google seem to tremendously overestimate the value it provided. The only Google thing I ever used is Android, and only because it's too hard to avoid it. Had there not been Google you'd have used alternative services, and your life would not have been much worse. Yes, a similarly good search engine would have emerged, similar products would have been devised, and the internet would have been ad-supported as it already was before Google.
• habosa 2y ago
  I worked in Big Tech and it changed my life financially so I can’t judge anyone else for doing it, but I will say that I had a moral reckoning while I was there and I am (right now) unwilling to go back. At the time (2012-2022) the things about the business model that bothered me were surveillance culture, excessive advertising, and monopoly power. Internally I was also horrified at the abuse of “vendor/contractor” status to maintain a shadow workforce which did a lot of valuable work while receiving almost none of the financial benefits that the full-time workforce received. 3 years later all of those concerns remain but for me they’re a distant second behind the rise of AI. There’s a non-zero chance that AI is one of the most destructive creations in human history and I just can’t allow myself to help advance it until I’m convinced that chance is much closer to zero. I’m in the minority I know, so the best case scenario for me is that I’m wrong and everyone getting rich on AI right now has gotten rich for bringing us something good, not our doom.
  • devjab 2y ago
    I’m curious as to how you think it’ll be our doom. As for the ethics in it, there are two ways to look at it in my opinion. One is yours, the other is to accept that AI is coming and at least work to help your civilisation “win”. I doubt we’ll see any form of self aware AI in our lifetimes, but the AI tools are obviously going to become extremely powerful tool. I suspect we’ll continue heading down the “cyberpunk” road leading to the dystopian society we read about in the 80/90ies, but that’s not really the doom of mankind as such. It just sucks. As a former history major I do think it’ll be interesting to follow how AI shifts the power balances. We like to pretend that we’ve left the “might makes right” world behind, but AI is an arms race, and it’ll make some terrible weapons. Ethics aside you’re going to want to have the best of those if you want your civilisation to continue being capable or deciding which morals it wants to follow.
    • Unearned5161 2y ago
      While unemployment certainly deserves a conversation of its own, I think the more overlooked aspects of education and democracy will erode our society deeper into a hole by themselves. I'm rather fearful for the future of education in this current climate. The tools are already powerful enough to wreak havoc and they haven't stopped growing yet! I don't think we'll properly know the effect for some years now, not until the kids that are currently in 5th, 6th, or 7th start going into the workforce. While the individual optimist in me would like to see AI as this great equalizer, personal tutor for everyone, equal opportunity deliverance, I think we've fumbled it for all but a select few. Certainly there will be cases of great success, students who leverage AI to it's fullest extent. But I urge one to think of the other side of the pie. How will that student respond to this? And how many students are really in this section? AI in its current state presents a pact with the devil for all but the most disciplined and passionate of us. It makes it far to easy to resign all use of your critical mental faculties, and to stagnate in your various abilities to navigate our complex modern world. Skills such as critical reading, synthesizing, and writing are just a few of the most notable examples. Unrestrained use of tools that help us so immensely in these categories can bring nothing but slow demise for us in the end. This thought pattern pairs nicely with the discussion of AIs effects on democracy. Hopefully the step taken from assuming the aforementioned society, with its rampant inabilities to reason critically about its surroundings, to saying that this is categorically bad for democracy, isn't too large. Democracy, an imperfect form of government that is the best we have at this moment, only works well with an educated populace. An uneducated democracy governs on borrowed time. One can already see the paint start to peel (there is a larger effect that the Internet has on democracy that I'll leave out of this for now, but is worth thinking about as it's the one responsible for the current decline in our political reality). The unfortunate conclusion that I reach when I think of all of this, is that it comes down to the ability of government and corporations to properly restrain this technology and foster its growth in a manner that is beneficial for society. And that restraint is hard to see coming with our current set up. This is to avoid being overly dramatic and saying that it's impossible. If you look at the history of the United States, and truly observe the death grip that its baby, capitalism, has on its governance, if you look at this, you find it hard to believe that this time will be any different from times past. There is far too much money and national security concern at stake here to do anything but put the pedal to the floor and rapidly build an empire in this wild west of AI. The unfortunate conclusion is that perhaps this could have been a wonderful tool for humanity, and allowed us to realize our collective dreams, but due to the reasons stated above I believe this is unachievable with our current set up of governance and understanding of ethics, globally.
• imglorp 2y ago
  Regarding his ask that ACM dedicate itself to the public good, the IEEE is already there in its code of ethics. > hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, to strive to comply with ethical design and sustainable development practices, to protect the privacy of others, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment That code is pretty squarely at odds with big tech's latest malevolent aims.
• ajuc 2y ago
  I really like Timothy Snyder's take on this. Breakthroughs in information technology always cause disruption in the political meaning (wars and chaos). It was like that when writing was invented (making big organized religions possible), it was the same with printing press (allowing reformation and big political movements), it was similar with radio (which allowed 20-th century style totalitarian regimes). Each time the legacy powers struggled to survive and wars started. It took some time for the societies to adapt and regulate the new technologies and create a new stable equilibrium. It's not surprising that it's the same with internet. We have unstable wild-west style information oligarchy forming before our eyes. The moguls build continent-spanning empires. There's no regulation, the costs are negligible, and the only ones trying to control it are the authoritarians. And the new oligarchs are obviously fighting with their thought-control powers against the regulation with all they've got. It won't end without fireworks.
• richrichie 2y ago
  > In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure. This wrong on so many levels. There is neither a climate crisis nor a market failure. If any, central economies exhibited (and exhibit) higher levels of pollution and destruction of public good. Mindless repetition of the climate crisis trope has done more damage to the cause than carbon emissions.
  • metabagel 2y ago
    So, there’s no climate crisis, and also it’s caused by “central economies”? (I don’t know what those are, but they sound bad.)
    • richrichie 2y ago
      You understand “if any”?
  • pyrale 2y ago
    > There is neither a climate crisis… There is also an education crisis apparently.
• CalChris 2y ago
  I didn't think the Cambridge Analytica scandal had anything at all to do with computer science. I thought it had to do with business and hence business ethics.
• lisper 2y ago
  > It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. I'm going to have to add that my list of favorite aphorisms. And it's not just salaries that drive this dynamic. It is difficult to get someone to understand something when their entire identity is invested in not understanding it. This applies to religions, political ideologies, and even to a lot of self-styled rationalism.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  "But in my January 2019 Communications column,^b I dismissed the ethical-crisis vibe. I wrote, "If society finds the surveillance business model offensive, then the remedy is public policy, in the form of laws and regulations, rather than an ethics outrage." I now think, however, I was wrong."
• calibas 2y ago
  > the belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis This needs to be repeated more often. Early on, there was this idea that free market capitalism was inherently amoral, and we had to do things like "vote with your wallet" to enforce some kind of morality on the system. This has been gradually replaced with a pseudo-religious idea that there's some inherent "virtue" to capitalism. You just need to have faith in the system, and everything will magically work itself out.
  • omolobo 2y ago
    [dead]
• snnsbsnshs 2y ago
  I work on software for managing casinos. I feel morally superior. Big tech has real problems if working with gambling and weaponry is preferable to big tech.
  • sadeshmukh 2y ago
    How do you feel morally superior? Casinos are built to only extract money from people - they provide minimal value.
• recursivedoubts 2y ago
  “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• csours 2y ago
  'Never attribute to ethics that which can be explained by incentives' - Hanlon's Hammer 'Show me an organization's stupidity and I'll show you their malice' - Munger's Psychology of Human Misquotations
• neilv 2y ago
  One ethical thing that some people on HN do, and more should: criticize big companies when they do something unethical, even if you'd want to work for them. Yes, presumably, you will get on some company-wide hiring denylists. (Not because you're prominent, but because there will be routine LLM-powered "corporate fit" checks, against massive corpora and streams of ongoing surveillance capitalism monitoring of most things being said.) Some things need to be said. And people need to not just hear it once, and forget it, but to hear it from many people, on an ongoing basis. So not saying it is being complicit.
• efitz 2y ago
  How do I reason ethically about this? I am a security professional. My work directly affects the security of the systems I am responsible for. If I do my job well, people’s data is less likely to be stolen, leaked, intentionally corrupted, or held for ransom. I also influence privacy related decisions. I work for a Mag7 company. The company has many divisions; the division I work for doesn’t seem to be doing anything that I would perceive as unethical, but other divisions of my company do behave in a way I consider unethical. I’m not afraid to take an ethical stance; in a previous job at another company I have directly confronted my management chain about questionable behavior and threatened to quit (I ended up convincing them my position was correct). So how do I reason about that? Really the sticking point is that large companies are not monoliths. Am I acting unethically for working for an ethical division of an imperfect company?
  • redelbee 2y ago
    There are many ways to reason ethically about your situation, and you could start by using historical philosophers as inspiration. Bentham might apply if you consider the overall outcome: is the work your company does positive or ethical for the majority of people the majority of the time? It seems like the “greatest good for the greatest number” would allow for some small unethical aspects so long as the outcome is good for the majority. This could also be seen as a shortcoming in that philosophy because it justifies some pretty terrible actions for the greater good (some of which, like the Manhattan project and its outcome, are mentioned elsewhere in this thread). Kant might make you look at your company and imagine that all companies acted that way as a way to reason ethically. If all companies acted the way your company acts would that be good or bad for humanity? Kind of like the golden rule, but more rational. There are many more to consider but it’s my view that most of them will get you to the point where you probably shouldn’t work for an unethical company, even if your particular work or area of focus is perfectly ethical. Mainly because you working for the company allows or helps it to exist in some way, and we don’t want unethical companies to exist. So maybe you could reason your way into working there if your sole focus was finding a way to destroy the company somehow. Otherwise it’s probably better to work elsewhere.
    • 2y ago
• ryukoposting 2y ago
  Thank you! Great to see this message getting a bit of a platform. As industry practicioners, we have the agency to force positive change in our field. If the government is too encumbered and the executives are too avaricious, that leaves us. If you want tech to do good things for people, work for a company that makes tech that does good things for people.
• petermcneeley 2y ago
  You cant have an ethical crisis if you dont have any morality. Do what thou wilt is our only modern ethos.
• Animats 2y ago
  "I bemoaned that humanity seems to be serving technology rather than the other way around. I argued that tech corporations have become too powerful and their power must be curtailed." That's a generic problem with corporatism and monopoly, not "tech". It shows up in "tech" because "tech" scales so well and has such strong network effects. But the US's tolerance of monopoly is the real cause. There need to be about four major players before markets push prices down. The US has three big banks, two big drugstore chains, etc. Tough antitrust enforcement would help. Google should be broken up into Search, Browsers, Mobile Devices, Ads, and Services, and the units prohibited from contracting with each other. Tough labor law enforcement would help. No more "gig worker" jobs that are exempt from labor law. No more "wage shaving". No more unpaid overtime. Prorate medical insurance payments based on hours, so companies that won't pay people for more than 30 hours a week pay their fraction of medical insurance. A minimum wage high enough that people making it don't need food stamps.
  • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    I think an under-discussed issue is how companies are allowed to own sub-companies that don't need to necessarily disclose they're owned by a larger conglomerate. Like I don't know how you necessarily solve this, but I think if people, for example, knew the sheer number of snack brands owned by Nabisco, there would be a lot more discussion about corporate consolidation and monopolies.
    • Animats 2y ago
      > sheer number of snack brands owned by Nabisco Also Yum and Roark, which, together, own much of fast food.
  • WalterBright 2y ago
    > Prorate medical insurance payments based on hours, so companies that won't pay people for more than 30 hours a week pay their fraction of medical insurance Attaching medical insurance to one's job is a market distortion caused by government tax policy. I.e. it enables one to buy insurance with pre-tax dollars rather than after-tax dollars. Making medical insurance premiums fully tax-deductible would fix that. > A minimum wage high enough that people making it don't need food stamps. That just makes those people unemployable, and will need food stamps even more. Nobody is going to hire people who cost more than the value they produce. > Google should be broken up into Search, Browsers, Mobile Devices, Ads, and Services, and the units prohibited from contracting with each other. Google is already in trouble because AI is disrupting their search/advertisement business model. I'd be careful about destroying big business. The US is only part of the world. Destroying US big business means other countries will have those companies, and it's lose lose for the US. Do you want Big Tech to be American companies, or foreign companies?
• lazzlazzlazz 2y ago
  The "ethics crisis", as described here, is the complaining of one ruling elite (traditional media, universities, bureaucrats, etc.) against another upcoming elite (tech). The problem is that all of the power is accruing to tech — at the expense of the competing, traditional elites. An even bigger problem is that most of the economic and social benefits have come from technology. This even includes shorter work weeks and paid leave (typically falsely credited to unions) and greater disposable income, which have come from technology (broadly speaking) and not from activism. A tech "ethics crisis" and the "dangerous" profit motive are just renewed attacks against capitalism, and "tech" is itself just the tip of the spear of capitalism (and the cultural nom de guerre of capitalism's elites).
• palata 2y ago
  > “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it,” This says it all.
• WalterBright 2y ago
  > But the belief in the magical power of the free market always to serve the public good has no theoretical basis.f In fact, our current climate crisis is a demonstrated market failure. It's not a free market failure. It's an example of the Tragedy of the Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
  • metabagel 2y ago
    It’s both.
    • WalterBright 2y ago
      The Commons is not owned by anyone, and so property rights are not in play. Property rights are essential to the proper functioning of the free market.
      • vacuity 2y ago
        Common resources lead to a free market failure exactly in the sense that they are not considered property: instead, they are free for the taking. Or perhaps it's your use of the word "proper" that is crucial here. Also, how do you explain how countries like the US are so prominently involved in the climate crisis? Are you going to say the US is not very much free market?
  • BitterCritter 2y ago
    I think that’s like saying a square is not a rectangle.
    • WalterBright 2y ago
      The Tragedy of the Commons is characteristic of Marxist economies, not free markets.
      • vacuity 2y ago
• aristofun 2y ago
  I wonder why it is often the case that people talking about ethics are the ones that looks like the least competent or decent to do so.
• zxcvbnm69 2y ago
  [dead]
• anigbrowl 2y ago
  It's good to see someone have the humility to lay out their strong previous position and then renounce it in plain language. So much public communication these days consists of hedging, back-pedaling, and other forms of strategic disavowal.
• kordlessagain 2y ago
  [flagged]
• kortilla 2y ago
  > We must balance optimizing for oneself with optimizing for others, including the public good. So how does working for Big Tech thread this needle? This is the question that people who work for Big Tech must ask themselves. This is a bullshit premise. Many people who worked at Google when I was there (including myself) sincerely believed that Google was good for society. People sitting on the outside have an incorrect mental model of how people work at companies like this. A very very small minority work there and think the company is evil. The ones who think that do not last long because it’s insufferable working with people drinking different koolaid. The same thing is true for working for Wall Street, defense contractors, drug companies, and whatever else you can think of. If it’s a company that defines and leads the space, it’s likely filled with motivated employees that already think the company is doing the right thing. So there is no ethical quandary of “what is good for me vs what is good for society” because the employee thinks he/she is doing good for society by working there. > Uber skirted regulations, shrugged off safety issues, and presided over a workplace rife with sexual harassment.” Was it ethical to have worked at Uber under Kalanick? This is the false dichotomy that doesn’t apply to people who drink the koolaid. If you think Uber has saved thousands of lives via reduced drunk driving and available rides out of bad areas, disrupting/ignoring local regulations is easy to justify. A leader who had sexual harassment issues is completely irrelevant because of “the mission”. Implying that someone is unethical to be at Uber while that was going on makes as much sense as implying someone is unethical for being a research professor at Harvard when others there have published fraudulent papers at the same time.
  • titanomachy 2y ago
    > A very very small minority work there and think the company is evil. I think that for every true believer in the "mission" of the company, there are two or three employees who choose not to closely scrutinize the ethics of the company's actions, because they are paid extraordinarily well. I don't think my company is evil per se, but I do think that if we were optimizing for the good of humanity, rather than profit, our products would look rather different.
• Nevermark 2y ago
  Technology scales lots of things. Including business models based on conflict of interest. There were corporate conflicts of interest with respect to customers long before technology. But it took tech to create a community scrapbook, tied to a mass surveillance, psychology hacking and coercion flywheel, powered by hundreds of billions of dollars from third parties, and motivated by trillions of dollars of potential market cap. Something has to give. Society is eventually going to have to come to terms with the fact that minor incidents of poor behavior, when scaled up with technology, can significantly degrade society. Many things are illegal now, that in the far past would never have been considered a problem. Scale matters. And Internet tech scales.