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Is there? I don't see any contradiction there. For me it's funny that the first time most programmers ever think about the ethics of automating away jobs is wh

Is there? I don't see any contradiction there. For me it's funny that the first time most programmers ever think about the ethics of automating away jobs is when they themselves become automated.

azemetre 1y ago
The book "Why We Fear AI" by Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer talks about this dynamic. Whether it will lead to a class awakening because previously if you were aligned with the company you were rewarded as well, but now if you align with the company you're advocating to destroy your livelihood. What rational worker would want to take part in this?
- ffsm8 1y ago
  Lots? I mean most people I know aren't even willing to entertain the notion wherever it's gonna happen within our lifetime. The argument usually centers around the fact that LLMs aren't AGI, which is obviously true but also kinda missing the point
  - azemetre 1y ago
    We don't need AGI to cause a massive amount of disruption. If leadership of companies want to force use these LLMs, which is what we've been experiencing the last two years, workers will be forced to use them. It's not like there is an organic bottom up movement on driving this usage. It's always top down mandated by executives with little regard on how it impacts worker's lives. We've also seen how these tools have made certain jobs worse, not better, like translating: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-ai-is-killing-jobs-in-the-tech-f39 https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-ai-is-killing-jobs-i...
- muldvarp 1y ago
  Software developers. Many of them are still championing LLMs. Also anybody who still contributes to open source software.
  - Applejinx 1y ago
    In contributing to open source software at scale I'm teaching apprentices. I expect them to adapt what I've done to their own purposes, and have seen a good amount of that out in the wild, often people who ended up doing something entirely different like building hardware that also contains software. I don't think LLMs will be able to pick up on what's done by an evolving and growing codebase with previous projects also included. More likely it will draw from older stuff and combine it with other people's more normal stuff and end up with an incoherent mess that won't compile. Not all work is 'come up with the correct answer to the problem, and then everybody uses it forever'.
- geodel 1y ago
  It can lead to class awakening but I think AI is not sufficient. It would need very large scale climate / ecological disasters where suddenly lot of current middle classes conveniences become available only to top classes.
  - azemetre 1y ago
    This is happening parts of the world where hyper scale data centers are being built. Rolling brown outs and diverting potable water from towns, you find these stories both in Ireland and across South America. We already see it happening in the US too, with the Nashville data centers causing immense medical issues.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
>that the first time most programmers ever think about the ethics of automating away jobs is when they themselves become automated. It's more about a logical outcome. Automating scripts means existing employees can do other or more work. AI doesn't feel like that at all. it wants to automate labor itself. And no country has the structure ready for that sort of "post work" world.
scott_w 1y ago
He didn't say "contradiction," he said "kafkaesque," meaning "characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka's fictional world" (according to Google).
- d_sem 1y ago
  I'm being facetious, but life in the rust belt post industrial automation is kinda close. Google Maps a random Detroit east side neighborhood to see what I mean.
  - capyba 1y ago
    But it wasn’t industrial automation that ruined Detroit. It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition.
    - dgfitz 1y ago
      > It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition. I contend it was when Dodge won the court case deciding that shareholders were more important than employees. It’s been a slow burn ever since.
    - ModernMech 1y ago
      > It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition. A lot of their capability was due to them being better at automation. See: NUMMI
    - d_sem 1y ago
      Detroit's decline started as soon as assembly plants went one-story in the 40's-50's. There was further decline with the advent of robotics/computers in the 70's-80's, and 2000's with globalization.
- muldvarp 1y ago
  I don't see why it would be "kafkaesque" either. In fact I fail to see any connection between those two facts other than that both are decisions to allow or not allow something to happen by OpenAI.
ryaniscool 1y ago
It's not a comment on the ethics of replacing jobs but the hypocrisy of companies using "ethics" as reasoning for restricting content. They are pursuing profits. Their ethical focus is essentially a form of theater.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  Replacing jobs is not an ethical issue. Automation and technology has been replacing jobs for well over a century, almost always to better outcomes for society. If it were an ethical issue, then it would be unethical not to do it. In any case, which jobs have been replaced by LLMs? Most of the actual ones I know were BS jobs to begin with - jobs I wish had not existed to begin with. The rest of the ones are where CEOs are simply using AI as an excuse to execute layoffs (i.e. the work isn't actually being done by an LLM).
  - bugglebeetle 1y ago
    Ask ChatGPT to explain consequentialism to you.
  - nicce 1y ago
    Yeah, the issue is that there is no common benefit if the private company is the only one doing the replacement. Are we ready for AGI before we solve issues of capitalism? Otherwise, the society may get a harsh reset.
    - zozbot234 1y ago
      There's actually a lot of common benefit. That company can now supply their goods and services in greater quantity and at lower cost, which raises consumers' standard of living. Meanwhile the workers who were previously employed in menial clerical tasks will simply switch to supervising the AI's that perform those same tasks for them.
      - nicce 1y ago
        I don't think this will happen. It does not work with the capitalism if we have only few companies which have all this power. And many consumers don't have jobs left so the value of money increases faster than the "cost" decreases. > Meanwhile the workers who were previously employed in menial clerical tasks will simply switch to supervising the AI's that perform those same tasks for them. Put this to numbers, right now - if we remove all workers and leave managers on those fields - how many people are still employed?
bgwalter 1y ago
The number of bullshit jobs has been growing since the Internet, and programmers have facilitated them by adding unnecessary complexity. This time the purported capabilities of "AI" are a direct attack on thinking. Outsourcing thinking is creepy and turns humans into biorobots. It is different from robotic welding in an assembly line. Even if new bullshit jobs are created, the work will just be that of a human photocopier. [All this is written under the assumption that "AI" works, which it does not but which is the premise assumed by the persons quoted in the Register article.]
- muldvarp 1y ago
  I don't see how thinking about some source code is an innately more human activity than welding. Both can be done by humans, both couldn't be done by anything but humans until automation came along and now both can be done by humans and automated systems. I also fail to see how LLMs can turn humans into "biorobots". You can still do all the things you could do before LLMs came along. The economic value of those things just decreased enourmously.
  - bgwalter 1y ago
    Then go weld. There are still some positions for humans.
    - DrewADesign 1y ago
      Tons of welding and other manufacturing jobs in the northeast— they’ll even apprentice you into positions with no existing knowledge and larger companies (like General Dynamics) will even pay for your job-related degrees, sometimes being able to take the classes on the clock or get a stipend. They have to do this because the industry has basically been kicking the aging-workforce can down the road for a few decades since off-shoring and automation outpaced increasing demand, and now they don’t have nearly enough people that even know how to program CNC machines when CAM software falls short. I have a feeling a lot of displaced software people will go that route, and have a big change in compensation and working conditions in the process.
ActionHank 1y ago
I think many of us question the ethics of lying to sell a product that cannot deliver what you are promising. All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs, they are happy there is a shortcut through boilerplate and documentation. They are also equally unhappy about having to talk management, who know very little about the world of dev, off the ledge as they are getting ready to jump off with their AI wings that will fail. Finally, the original point was about censorship and controlling of information, not automating jobs.
- DrewADesign 1y ago
  > All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs While many of them are mistaken, the much bigger problem is for all the early career developers, many of whom will never work in the field. These people were assured by everyone from professors to industry leaders to tech writers that the bounty of problems available for humanity to solve would outpace the rate at which automation would reduce the demand for developers. I thought it was pretty obviously a fairy tale that people who believed in infinite growth created to soothe themselves and other industry denizens suspecting the tech industry hadn’t unlocked the secret to infinite free lunch, but in reality are closer to the business end of an ouroboro than they realize. Just as the manufacturing sector let its Tool and Die knowledge atrophy, perhaps irreversibly, the software business will do the same with development. Off-shoring meant the sector had a glut of tool and die knowledge so there was no immediate financial incentive to hire apprentices. There’s a bunch of near-retirees with all of that knowledge and nobody to take over for them, and now that advanced manufacturing is picking up steam in the US again, many have no choice but to outsource that to China, too. Dispensing with the pretenses of being computer scientists or engineers, software development is a trade, not an academic discipline, and education can’t instill professional competence. After a decade or two of never having to hire a junior because the existing pool of developers can serve all of the industry’s needs, suddenly we’ll have run out of people to replace the retirees with and that’s that for the incredible US software industry.
  - fuzzfactor 1y ago
    For another thing the owners of the data centers may not do so well if their wildest dreams fail to come true, and if they don't happen to make enough money to replace the hardware before it wears out.

Is there? I don't see any contradiction there. For me it's funny that the first time most programmers ever think about the ethics of automating away jobs is when they themselves become automated.

azemetre 1y ago

The book "Why We Fear AI" by Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer talks about this dynamic. Whether it will lead to a class awakening because previously if you were aligned with the company you were rewarded as well, but now if you align with the company you're advocating to destroy your livelihood. What rational worker would want to take part in this?

ffsm8 1y ago
Lots? I mean most people I know aren't even willing to entertain the notion wherever it's gonna happen within our lifetime. The argument usually centers around the fact that LLMs aren't AGI, which is obviously true but also kinda missing the point
- azemetre 1y ago
  We don't need AGI to cause a massive amount of disruption. If leadership of companies want to force use these LLMs, which is what we've been experiencing the last two years, workers will be forced to use them. It's not like there is an organic bottom up movement on driving this usage. It's always top down mandated by executives with little regard on how it impacts worker's lives. We've also seen how these tools have made certain jobs worse, not better, like translating: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-ai-is-killing-jobs-in-the-tech-f39 https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/how-ai-is-killing-jobs-i...
muldvarp 1y ago
Software developers. Many of them are still championing LLMs. Also anybody who still contributes to open source software.
- Applejinx 1y ago
  In contributing to open source software at scale I'm teaching apprentices. I expect them to adapt what I've done to their own purposes, and have seen a good amount of that out in the wild, often people who ended up doing something entirely different like building hardware that also contains software. I don't think LLMs will be able to pick up on what's done by an evolving and growing codebase with previous projects also included. More likely it will draw from older stuff and combine it with other people's more normal stuff and end up with an incoherent mess that won't compile. Not all work is 'come up with the correct answer to the problem, and then everybody uses it forever'.
geodel 1y ago
It can lead to class awakening but I think AI is not sufficient. It would need very large scale climate / ecological disasters where suddenly lot of current middle classes conveniences become available only to top classes.
- azemetre 1y ago
  This is happening parts of the world where hyper scale data centers are being built. Rolling brown outs and diverting potable water from towns, you find these stories both in Ireland and across South America. We already see it happening in the US too, with the Nashville data centers causing immense medical issues.

johnnyanmac 1y ago

>that the first time most programmers ever think about the ethics of automating away jobs is when they themselves become automated. It's more about a logical outcome. Automating scripts means existing employees can do other or more work. AI doesn't feel like that at all. it wants to automate labor itself. And no country has the structure ready for that sort of "post work" world.

scott_w 1y ago

He didn't say "contradiction," he said "kafkaesque," meaning "characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka's fictional world" (according to Google).

d_sem 1y ago
I'm being facetious, but life in the rust belt post industrial automation is kinda close. Google Maps a random Detroit east side neighborhood to see what I mean.
- capyba 1y ago
  But it wasn’t industrial automation that ruined Detroit. It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition.
  - dgfitz 1y ago
    > It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition. I contend it was when Dodge won the court case deciding that shareholders were more important than employees. It’s been a slow burn ever since.
  - ModernMech 1y ago
    > It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition. A lot of their capability was due to them being better at automation. See: NUMMI
  - d_sem 1y ago
    Detroit's decline started as soon as assembly plants went one-story in the 40's-50's. There was further decline with the advent of robotics/computers in the 70's-80's, and 2000's with globalization.
muldvarp 1y ago
I don't see why it would be "kafkaesque" either. In fact I fail to see any connection between those two facts other than that both are decisions to allow or not allow something to happen by OpenAI.

ryaniscool 1y ago

It's not a comment on the ethics of replacing jobs but the hypocrisy of companies using "ethics" as reasoning for restricting content. They are pursuing profits. Their ethical focus is essentially a form of theater.

BeetleB 1y ago
Replacing jobs is not an ethical issue. Automation and technology has been replacing jobs for well over a century, almost always to better outcomes for society. If it were an ethical issue, then it would be unethical not to do it. In any case, which jobs have been replaced by LLMs? Most of the actual ones I know were BS jobs to begin with - jobs I wish had not existed to begin with. The rest of the ones are where CEOs are simply using AI as an excuse to execute layoffs (i.e. the work isn't actually being done by an LLM).
- bugglebeetle 1y ago
  Ask ChatGPT to explain consequentialism to you.
- nicce 1y ago
  Yeah, the issue is that there is no common benefit if the private company is the only one doing the replacement. Are we ready for AGI before we solve issues of capitalism? Otherwise, the society may get a harsh reset.
  - zozbot234 1y ago
    There's actually a lot of common benefit. That company can now supply their goods and services in greater quantity and at lower cost, which raises consumers' standard of living. Meanwhile the workers who were previously employed in menial clerical tasks will simply switch to supervising the AI's that perform those same tasks for them.
    - nicce 1y ago
      I don't think this will happen. It does not work with the capitalism if we have only few companies which have all this power. And many consumers don't have jobs left so the value of money increases faster than the "cost" decreases. > Meanwhile the workers who were previously employed in menial clerical tasks will simply switch to supervising the AI's that perform those same tasks for them. Put this to numbers, right now - if we remove all workers and leave managers on those fields - how many people are still employed?

bgwalter 1y ago

The number of bullshit jobs has been growing since the Internet, and programmers have facilitated them by adding unnecessary complexity. This time the purported capabilities of "AI" are a direct attack on thinking. Outsourcing thinking is creepy and turns humans into biorobots. It is different from robotic welding in an assembly line. Even if new bullshit jobs are created, the work will just be that of a human photocopier. [All this is written under the assumption that "AI" works, which it does not but which is the premise assumed by the persons quoted in the Register article.]

muldvarp 1y ago
I don't see how thinking about some source code is an innately more human activity than welding. Both can be done by humans, both couldn't be done by anything but humans until automation came along and now both can be done by humans and automated systems. I also fail to see how LLMs can turn humans into "biorobots". You can still do all the things you could do before LLMs came along. The economic value of those things just decreased enourmously.
- bgwalter 1y ago
  Then go weld. There are still some positions for humans.
  - DrewADesign 1y ago
    Tons of welding and other manufacturing jobs in the northeast— they’ll even apprentice you into positions with no existing knowledge and larger companies (like General Dynamics) will even pay for your job-related degrees, sometimes being able to take the classes on the clock or get a stipend. They have to do this because the industry has basically been kicking the aging-workforce can down the road for a few decades since off-shoring and automation outpaced increasing demand, and now they don’t have nearly enough people that even know how to program CNC machines when CAM software falls short. I have a feeling a lot of displaced software people will go that route, and have a big change in compensation and working conditions in the process.

ActionHank 1y ago

I think many of us question the ethics of lying to sell a product that cannot deliver what you are promising. All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs, they are happy there is a shortcut through boilerplate and documentation. They are also equally unhappy about having to talk management, who know very little about the world of dev, off the ledge as they are getting ready to jump off with their AI wings that will fail. Finally, the original point was about censorship and controlling of information, not automating jobs.

DrewADesign 1y ago
> All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs While many of them are mistaken, the much bigger problem is for all the early career developers, many of whom will never work in the field. These people were assured by everyone from professors to industry leaders to tech writers that the bounty of problems available for humanity to solve would outpace the rate at which automation would reduce the demand for developers. I thought it was pretty obviously a fairy tale that people who believed in infinite growth created to soothe themselves and other industry denizens suspecting the tech industry hadn’t unlocked the secret to infinite free lunch, but in reality are closer to the business end of an ouroboro than they realize. Just as the manufacturing sector let its Tool and Die knowledge atrophy, perhaps irreversibly, the software business will do the same with development. Off-shoring meant the sector had a glut of tool and die knowledge so there was no immediate financial incentive to hire apprentices. There’s a bunch of near-retirees with all of that knowledge and nobody to take over for them, and now that advanced manufacturing is picking up steam in the US again, many have no choice but to outsource that to China, too. Dispensing with the pretenses of being computer scientists or engineers, software development is a trade, not an academic discipline, and education can’t instill professional competence. After a decade or two of never having to hire a junior because the existing pool of developers can serve all of the industry’s needs, suddenly we’ll have run out of people to replace the retirees with and that’s that for the incredible US software industry.
- fuzzfactor 1y ago
  For another thing the owners of the data centers may not do so well if their wildest dreams fail to come true, and if they don't happen to make enough money to replace the hardware before it wears out.