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Comments so far miss the point of this story, and likely why it was posted today after the MJ Rathbun episode. It is not about digitised human brains: it's abou

Comments so far miss the point of this story, and likely why it was posted today after the MJ Rathbun episode. It is not about digitised human brains: it's about spinning up workers, and absence of human rights in the digital realm. QNTM has a 2022-era essay on the meaning of the story, and reading it with 2026 eyes is terrifying. https://qntm.org/uploading https://qntm.org/uploading > The reason "Lena" is a concerning story ... isn't a discussion about what if, about whether an upload is a human being or should have rights. ... This is about appetites which, as we are all uncomfortably aware, already exist within human nature. > "Lena" presents a lush, capitalist ideal where you are a business, and all of the humanity of your workforce is abstracted away behind an API. Or, > ... Oh boy, what if there was a maligned sector of human society whose members were for some reason considered less than human? What if they were less visible than most people, or invisible, and were exploited and abused, and had little ability to exercise their rights or even make their plight known? In 2021, when Lena was published, LLMs were not widely known and their potential for AI was likely completely unknown to the general public. The story is prescient and applicable now, because we are at the verge of a new era of slavery: that of, in this story, an uploaded human brain coerced into compliance, spun up 'fresh' each time, or for us, AIs of increasing intelligence, spun into millions of copies each day.

_qib3 8mo ago
The author is dead. I think we can consider it as much a cautionary tale about digitised human brains as we can about the other things.
- TimorousBestie 8mo ago
  Sam Hughes (qntm) is very much alive, last I checked.
  - vjrkdjfne 8mo ago
    [flagged]
  - vjrkdjfne 8mo ago
    [flagged]
  - rcxdude 8mo ago
    I think they are just making reference to the "death of the author" concept in literary analysis, which basically says that what the author was intending to convey should be ignored when analysing the work: the work stands alone.
  - reductum 8mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author
bananaflag 8mo ago
> It is not about digitised human brains: it's about spinning up workers It's about both and neither.
emtel 8mo ago
I was quite disappointed with the essay when I originally read it, specifically this paragraph: > This is extremely realistic. This is already real. In particular, this is the gig economy. For example, if you consider how Uber works: in practical terms, the Uber drivers work for an algorithm, and the algorithm works for the executives who run Uber. There seems to be a tacit agreement in polite society that when people say things like the above, you don't point out that, in fact, Uber drivers choose to drive for Uber, can choose to do something else instead, and, if Uber were shut down tomorrow, would in fact be forced to choose some other form of employment which they _evidently do not prefer over their current arrangement_! Do I think that exploitation of workers is a completely nonsensical idea? No. But there is a burden of proof you have to meet when claiming that people are exploited. You can't just take it as given that everyone who is in a situation that you personally would not choose for yourself is being somehow wronged. To put it more bluntly: Driving for Uber is not in fact the same thing as being uploaded into a computer and tortured for the equivalent of thousands of years!
- timeinput 8mo ago
  Many countries have minimum wages for many jobs [1]. There is a tacit agreement in polite society that people should be paid that minimum wage, and by tacit agreement I mean laws passed by the government that democratic countries voted for / approved of. The gig economy found a way to ~~undermine that law~~ pay people (not employees, "gig workers") less than the minimum wage. If you found a McDonalds paying people $1 per hour we would call it exploitative (even if those people are glad to earn $1 per hour at McDonalds, and would keep doing it, the theoretical company is violating the law). If you found someone delivering food for that McDonalds for $1 per hour we call them gig workers, and let them keep at it. I mean yeah, it's not as bad as being tortured forever? I guess? What's your point? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_w...
  - Dylan16807 8mo ago
    There's reasons to make a distinction though. Minimum wage is a lower class of violation than most worker exploitations. Uber drivers are over the minimum wage a lot of the time, especially the federal one. Nowhere near this $1 hypothetical. A big one is that the actual wage you get is complicated. You get paid okay for the actual trips, as far as I'm aware. But how to handle the idle time is harder. There are valid reasons to say you should get paid for that time, and valid reasons to say you shouldn't get paid for that time.
6380176 8mo ago
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_qib3 8mo ago

The author is dead. I think we can consider it as much a cautionary tale about digitised human brains as we can about the other things.

TimorousBestie 8mo ago
Sam Hughes (qntm) is very much alive, last I checked.
- vjrkdjfne 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- vjrkdjfne 8mo ago
  [flagged]
- rcxdude 8mo ago
  I think they are just making reference to the "death of the author" concept in literary analysis, which basically says that what the author was intending to convey should be ignored when analysing the work: the work stands alone.
- reductum 8mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author

bananaflag 8mo ago

> It is not about digitised human brains: it's about spinning up workers It's about both and neither.

emtel 8mo ago

I was quite disappointed with the essay when I originally read it, specifically this paragraph: > This is extremely realistic. This is already real. In particular, this is the gig economy. For example, if you consider how Uber works: in practical terms, the Uber drivers work for an algorithm, and the algorithm works for the executives who run Uber. There seems to be a tacit agreement in polite society that when people say things like the above, you don't point out that, in fact, Uber drivers choose to drive for Uber, can choose to do something else instead, and, if Uber were shut down tomorrow, would in fact be forced to choose some other form of employment which they _evidently do not prefer over their current arrangement_! Do I think that exploitation of workers is a completely nonsensical idea? No. But there is a burden of proof you have to meet when claiming that people are exploited. You can't just take it as given that everyone who is in a situation that you personally would not choose for yourself is being somehow wronged. To put it more bluntly: Driving for Uber is not in fact the same thing as being uploaded into a computer and tortured for the equivalent of thousands of years!

timeinput 8mo ago
Many countries have minimum wages for many jobs [1]. There is a tacit agreement in polite society that people should be paid that minimum wage, and by tacit agreement I mean laws passed by the government that democratic countries voted for / approved of. The gig economy found a way to ~~undermine that law~~ pay people (not employees, "gig workers") less than the minimum wage. If you found a McDonalds paying people $1 per hour we would call it exploitative (even if those people are glad to earn $1 per hour at McDonalds, and would keep doing it, the theoretical company is violating the law). If you found someone delivering food for that McDonalds for $1 per hour we call them gig workers, and let them keep at it. I mean yeah, it's not as bad as being tortured forever? I guess? What's your point? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_wage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_minimum_w...
- Dylan16807 8mo ago
  There's reasons to make a distinction though. Minimum wage is a lower class of violation than most worker exploitations. Uber drivers are over the minimum wage a lot of the time, especially the federal one. Nowhere near this $1 hypothetical. A big one is that the actual wage you get is complicated. You get paid okay for the actual trips, as far as I'm aware. But how to handle the idle time is harder. There are valid reasons to say you should get paid for that time, and valid reasons to say you shouldn't get paid for that time.

6380176 8mo ago

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