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Anybody who stays at openai is signing on to build machines that will be used to kill innocent people and control people who think that’s a bad idea.
by kennywinker 8mo ago
Anybody who stays at openai is signing on to build machines that will be used to kill innocent people and control people who think that’s a bad idea.
- ed_mercer 8mo agoI’m worried that China will build said killing machines and that we’ll be unprepared.
- orwin 8mo agoUnless you're living in Taiwan, I don't think you have a lot to prepare for.
- ethbr1 8mo agoJust wait until China gets to the next stage of capitalism. They're investing their trade surplus in assets around the world, especially the third world. When those assets start to go bad and/or the government nationalizes them? We'll see if China responds any differently than any of the other colonial powers with business interests.
- dbtc 8mo agoI'm worried that China will build said killing machines only because they see that we are and feel the need to be prepared.
- bilbo0s 8mo agoThis. Everyone will do this, because everyone will believe that everyone will do this. Even worse, there really is no guarantee that the great powers will create the best terminators. Everyone talks about China and the US. (And we should.) At the same time however, we should all keep in mind that nations from India and Indonesia, to North and South Korea will not be simply sitting on their hands while the US and China forge ahead. A future where 4 million dollar American or Chinese terminators are easily overwhelmed by thousands and thousands of 5 dollar Indian autonomous devices is not at all outside the realm of future possibilities. That's what makes it all so concerning. We can kind of see where it leads in terms of enhanced capability potential for non-state actors, but we can't really see a way to avoid that future.
- sidcool 8mo agoGame theory in action
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- zwarag 8mo agoIf you compare how many countries China has attacked or invaded with how many the United States has attacked or invaded, it paints a clear picture of whom to fear.
- henry2023 8mo ago“I’m afraid my neighbor would kill my son, therefore, I’ll kill my son myself”
- OhioMan2943 8mo agoThe myth of american moral superiority had been dead for a while. Why would china be any more evil than the US, which has waged far more colonialist wars and killed far more foreign lives in recent times (look at the news today for inspiration)
- afavour 8mo agoI don’t see any contradiction with what the OP said, though. You don’t have to be morally superior to still be concerned about a country’s forces killing you.
- OhioMan2943 8mo agoIt's a reversal of the more likely situation which is the us getting it and china following in response. Nuclear weapons anyone? Remember who started those.
- lakrici88284 8mo ago[dead]
- smallnix 8mo agoUighur concentration camps? Falun Gong organ harvesting?
- ceejayoz 8mo ago[flagged]
- OhioMan2943 8mo agoVietnam war, iraq war, afghanistan war, iran war, gaza war, allowing iraq to get and use chemical weapons on iran, forced regime change in south america (then and now). Get real it's not equivalent in any way
- nozzlegear 8mo ago
- jatari 8mo agoChina is currently a more morally virtuous country than the US.
- onetokeoverthe 8mo ago[dead]
- rockskon 8mo agoThey welded shut the doors to Uyghur Muslims and had a bunch of donated food for them stacked outside their homes in one giant pile that they couldn't get to. It either rotted away or was eaten by animals.
- fooster 8mo agoJack booted thugs shot a women in the face for the crime of sitting in her car and the administration called her a terrorist. Nothing happened to the thug. Jack booted thugs shot a man in the back for the crime of defending a woman and the administration called him a terrorist. Nothing happened to that thug either.
- insane_dreamer 8mo agoAbsolutely. But what people don't realize is this sort of thing happens in China too, it's just never reported or heard about, other than some whispers here and there, because of such tight control over the media, the internet, and public discourse. In the US, as much as the fascists are trying to take over, at least you can still protest and make your voice heard.
- kelseyfrog 8mo agoSource?
- insane_dreamer 8mo agoMe. I lived and worked there for a number of years. When you talk to the local people in confidence you find out about this stuff, and you sometimes catch glimpses of it before it's scrubbed from local social media. There's a very high level of control.
- jimmydoe 8mo agowhile you are worried about China, USI have done a genocide and started a new war.
- infinitewars 8mo agoAnd the U.S./Thiel/Musk are trying to start an AI-powered nuclear war next: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_system) https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_syst...
- suzzer99 8mo agoI got scared when I saw China's synchronized drone swarms at the Beijing Olympics, which I believe was the point.
- tartoran 8mo ago[flagged]
- suzzer99 8mo agoWhy would you think my comment has anything to do with defending Trump or the US attacking Iran? It was about technology.
- tartoran 8mo agoI don’t think your comment had anything to do with you defending Trump, I don’t think you are. I just drew the logical conclusion with respect to US and China striving for supremacy. While China is somewhat ‘in sync’ we have a leader who’s sawing chaos and impulsively starting wars without having long term plans. If something it adds to the point you were making. Cheers
- platevoltage 8mo agoMy thoughts were "why do we still buy fireworks. This is way cooler, and not really annoying"
- nerfbatplz 8mo agoThe last time China bombed a foreign country was 1979, 47 years ago. Has the US gone even 47 days in the last 80 years without bombing another country?
- GauntletWizard 8mo ago[flagged]
- cherry_tree 8mo agoAre you suggesting the USA has not funded proxies?
- nozzlegear 8mo agoI think they were suggesting that China has bombed foreign countries through the use of proxies. They didn't actually say anything about the USA.
- platevoltage 8mo agoWouldn't catch the USA fighting a proxy war. /s
- idiotsecant 8mo agoYa, this is in fact quantifiably better. Insofar as number of deaths = level of badness. Neither is a picnic but I'll take a small proxy conflict over massive direct air campaign and definitely boots-on-the-ground Freedom campaigns any day.
- bamboozled 8mo agoThey have to build them because we will build them...
- insane_dreamer 8mo agoI reject that argument. I dislike China (the CCP, not the people), and having lived there 6 years I know it much better than most foreigners. But your argument leads to us becoming just like China (CCP). I'd rather hold to some moral values and humanity and be a weaker country, than discard them to be strong.
- kennywinker 8mo agoOf course! The only way to fight ai powered killing machines and mass surveilance is to make ai powred killing machines and do mass surveillance. It’s so simple, i don’t know why i didn’t think of it! But seriously - you are describing the kind of thinking that caused ww1, and the nuclear arms race that almost caused human extinction. It’s a bad idea that goes bad places.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- rvz 8mo agoThat's fine. But they shouldn't be lecturing to anyone about "principles" or moral superiority and at the same time being either paid or holding RSUs as well, since that would make them completely dishonest themselves. It just shows that they have done poor research about the company before joining (Meta is just as bad) and are in on the grift (joined OpenAI only after post-ChatGPT) and this employee does not believe what they are saying.
- SilverElfin 8mo agoOr onto mass surveillance which is a pathway to social credit score style oppression. See this mass surveillance demo: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/8f42e48f-1b35-450d-8dda-2755c1614b08 https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/8f42e48f-1b35-450d-8dda-2...
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- valleyer 8mo agoNit: ISPs don't have access to path names / query strings of browsing activity. Those are encrypted by TLS. (They're also not part of "DNS".)
- aaron695 8mo ago[dead]
- nirui 8mo agoA lot of people despite the idea of killing, but as technology advances, and the cost of weapon systems increases, it is less and less likely that these expensive systems will be used to target innocent people, since doing so is likely a waste of resources. On the other hand, usually it is those less-advanced weapons that inflects most mass casualties. Some country can perform a successful head hunt in the span of an afternoon tea party, while some other country have to level cities for few years and yet still fails to even touch the opposition leader. That's the difference between advanced and less-advanced systems. If people here loves peace, good. But if we can always reasoning our way out of conflict, then why do we also invented the career of professional police force? Of course, it is possible that countries advanced too far ahead might bully those less-advanced ones. But then, maybe the less-advanced countries should look inward and reflect on the question why can't they themselves create such advanced weaponries. I don't know, maybe these countries instead of forcing their own people to wear an obeisant smelling face mask, it's time to gave back the power and opportunities so their people can actually grow and gain and eventually contribute.
- kennywinker 8mo ago> the cost of weapon systems increases, it is less and less likely that these expensive systems will be used to target innocent peopl Skeptical that’s true. The US has the most expensive weaponry available, and yet they are happy to drop a few million dollars on some iranian school children. It could be true, but i don’t think it is - if nothing else based on the stereotype of the rich kids who totals their parents car. > Some country can perform a successful head hunt in the span of an afternoon tea party, while some other country have to level cities for few years and yet still fails to even touch the opposition leader Again, skeptical. The US is happy to share its tech with israel, yet they are the ones levelling cities for years with no perceptable impact on leadership. > then why do we also invented the career of professional police force? Historically? To protect the property of the rich from the people they stole it from. > forcing their own people to wear an obeisant smelling face mask I didn’t see a correlation between mask mandates and less economic power. China, for instance, had quite severe covid restrictions and yet they are the kind of more-advanced nation you speak of. Most of latin america had virtually no restriction, and they are also “less advanced” wrt ai weapons. Also, where on earth still has mask restrictions? Find a new grievance, please.
- Towaway69 8mo ago> Anybody who stays at openai And paying off their mortgage and feeding their families and has a job in unstable times. Morals come a distant last in the current state of affairs.
- llamaz 8mo agoThere are levels to morality, from the abstract (e.g. climate change, energy usage, veganism) to the concrete (murder). Time are unstable, but there are multiple ways to make money. If you are established in your career, you can probably find work in a similar field, but the worst case scenario would be to drive a truck. The way you frame it, you make it sound like an engineer at OpenAI has no choice but to work there or end up on the street. But an engineer at OpenAI is not going to end up driving a truck, they're going to remain and engineer.
- Towaway69 8mo agoUnfortunately there are such things as social media where potential new employers check. That makes this step even more risky as this is an open opposition. Mostly probably they have already signed at anthropic.
- kelseyfrog 8mo agoWhy have them if they don't mean anything?
- Towaway69 8mo agoThat’s the result of equating survival with earning money. Western societies have done a good job of ensuring that. As long as morals aren’t equated to either to money or survival, they lose their meaning and become nice to have.
- Aurornis 8mo ago> That’s the result of equating survival with earning money. Western societies have done a good job of ensuring that. OpenAI engineers with vested shares are not worried about having enough money to survive. This is a lame attempt to shoe-horn unrelated political talking points and “Western society bad” into a conversation about highly paid engineers who will have no problem putting food on the table.
- slopinthebag 8mo agoConsidering the agreement Anthropic has with Palintar, you could say the exact same about employees working at Anthropic. Edit: Google, too. Microsoft with its Israel and US Gov ties. Probably most of big tech tbh. How do you recommend we view these employees from an ethical perspective?
- kennywinker 8mo agoAre they working on building tech that is being used for weapons or mass surveilance? Like yes Microsoft has contracts with israel, but their entire business is not centered around those contracts. If you help build a better ai for openai, it will be used for war and control. If you help build a better version of one of the 10,000 things microsoft makes, that’s not definitely going to be used for war and control. Not to get all historical on you, but if you worked for IBM in the 1930s-1940s you may have worked on something that was used to perpitrate a holocaust. Was that ethical? I don’t think so. That said, it’s very easy to abstract yourself away from the harm. To tell yourself you’re not the one who builds the landmines, you just maintain the coffee machine at the landmine factory. But that’s just lying to yourself. An honest and deep appraisal of what you’re work is helping make happen is required to decide if your job is ethical or not.
- slopinthebag 8mo ago> Are they working on building tech that is being used for weapons or mass surveilance? Weird how that seems to apply to the other tech companies, but for OpenAI it's just "Anybody who stays at openai" Someone at Google working on Gemini CLI is clear morally, but someone at OpenAI working on Codex is acting immoral? Seems like a clear double standard.
- kennywinker 8mo agoNo i’d actually say those are both deeply morally questionable jobs. Not just because of the weapons and mass surveillance angles either. Is one worse than the other? Not clearly. They are both helping build tools that are causing environmental and economic destruction, and they’re both building things likely to be used for violence and control. Idk if gemini has been tapped by any defense departments, but that would be the only subtle distinction i can see (has it happened yet, how hard will the company resist unrestricted use). Not sure how you read my comment and came to this whack conclusion.
- pembrook 8mo agoAnyone who leaves OpenAI is also signing the death warrant of countless young soldiers by refusing to help build the technology to help remove humans from old school combat. The current state of affairs of modern warfare is: lots of deaths, lots of collateral damage. Improving the technology used is more likely to lead to less collateral deaths of innocent people and your own soldiers as well. There’s already enough weapons to blow the entire world up a thousand times over. Making armies smarter about how they use these deadly weapons is a good thing. Technologists and intellectuals are notoriously terrible at these sorts of broader societal calculations. They all thought the internet and Social Media would obviously lead to global freedom, which it didn’t. Now technologists think their new thing, AI coding/spreadsheet bots, will destroy the global economy and kill us all or lead to communist techno-utopia. What if we stop with the moralistic grandstanding and self-aggrandizement and take a deep breath. None of the overpaid pontificators at OpenAI has ever seen real combat, so to make confident claims about what nascent technology will do to it is silly. This whole thread is going to age like milk.
- kennywinker 8mo agoAnd how exactly does collaborating with the US gov on mass surveillance of citizens help save the lives of young soldiers? But ok, let’s stick to weapons. The premise that we can wage war without sacrificing lives is a tantalizing one. But do you genuinely think that would prevent death? The drone warfare era under bush and obama shows that killing from afar with no skin in the game doesn’t lead to restraint or lack of war. It just leads to blowing up entire wedding parties.
- pembrook 8mo agoDo you realize that prior to drones, we would just carpet bomb entire cities? Collateral damage would be the entirety of the city itself and a huge percentage of the people in it, not just a wedding party. Also, China is doing mass surveillance just fine without OpenAI. So this is an irrelevant, mute point.
- kennywinker 8mo ago
- Fnoord 8mo agoYes, or subversion from within ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- andai 8mo agoThat's the trend we've been seeing for years yeah? Work at the main AI company. Company has severe ethical issues. Be a person who cares about that. Leave. Surprise, issues get worse.