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I disagree with this article and here's why. Life isn't black and white with "good/bad". Further, there's no objective measure of what is good or bad. Everyt

I disagree with this article and here's why. Life isn't black and white with "good/bad". Further, there's no objective measure of what is good or bad. Everything is a shade of gray. You certainly could argue that some actions are absolutely good or absolutely bad, but those aren't the majority of actions people take on a day to day basis. People aren't often faced with "should I kill this person" or "should I publish the cure for cancer". Instead it's "should I eat a hamburger or a salad" or "Should I finish this jira case or that jira case". For example, you could argue that anyone working in an automotive plant is doing something bad because they are helping to produce vehicles which burn fuel which perpetuates climate change. But those plants also often produce parts for farm equipment or vehicles used to transport necessities like food. People working at AI companies can make similar personal calculations. Like yeah there are bad things happening because of AI, but also they can believe that there are good things that can come as a result such as research and product developments.

graemep 13d ago
A few big good/bad decisions are more important than thousands of trivial decisions. Balancing good against bad is not clear, I agree, but that makes it all the more important to think about it when making a big decision such as what job to take. Its hard and people do not even agree about how to balance it - e.g. whether the ends justify the means.
- cogman10 13d ago
  Well that's my point. Someone working as a geologist for the oil industry can think climate change isn't real or not a problem so they can view their job of finding more oil as being a clear benefit for society. No amount of trying to tell them "But you are doing something bad by helping the oil industry" will make them reconsider if they are good or bad. But I also wouldn't say they are necessarily bad people. You can also simply just be wrong or misinformed when you make your moral calculation. Good people do bad things sometimes. Bad people do good things sometimes. That's why the framing of badness as a taint isn't really helpful IMO. It creates a "us vs them" sort of attitude that ultimately doesn't address whatever issue is at hand.
ArcHound 13d ago
I agree. In the particular case of AI companies, I think a handbrake should be pulled when they start claiming things like "10% chance we're ending humanity."
- ReturnoftheHack 13d ago
  [dead]
chrisjj 13d ago
> there's no objective measure of what is good or bad. Everything is a shade of gray. So, there's an ojective measure of shade of gray? /i Precision is not objectivity.
- cogman10 13d ago
  > So, there's an ojective measure of shade of gray? Very much no. More that almost all actions have good and bad impacts and how good or bad those impacts are can be judged completely differently between large groups of people. To someone that's Hindu, eating a cow is a supremely bad act. For your standard meat eater, it's just lunch. The cow eater is only a "bad person" to the Hindu. To them, the act is likely a white or light gray act.
dofm 13d ago
There may not be a definition of “good”. But there are several workable contextual definitions of bad; it’s your job to know what they are. For example: - it would cause a harm to someone who was not made aware of the risk up front. - it would cause someone to lose a job they didn’t know was under threat. - the way the harm occurs precludes its only corrective/curative action or has no adequate compensation. Bad things are almost always contextual but also almost always obvious in that context. You can’t avoid bad things that you can’t foresee. If you do not attempt to avoid, avert or mitigate bad things that you can foresee, then you are one of the bad things. Things may not always be black and white but it is wise not to seek the protection of the grey.
- SaltyBackendGuy 13d ago
  > it would cause someone to lose a job they didn’t know was under threat Under this guidance, wouldn't almost every technological advancement then qualify as bad? i.e. typewriter repair, etc.
  - dofm 13d ago
    To address the second part of the sentence you quoted, in this generic “doesn’t progress mean all jobs are impermanent?” sense, don’t people generically understand their jobs are generically under threat at some baseline level from progress? It doesn’t absolve you from the harm of being specifically responsible. I mean everyone has to die someday but that doesn’t excuse murder.
    - deleted 13d ago
      [deleted]
- wavemode 13d ago
  But what if (as the commenter you're responding to stated) someone believes that AI will have a positive effect on humanity? Is it morally wrong for them to disagree with your view?
  - 13d ago
12887-19 13d ago
Only bad things have happened so far in AI. This is why they need the daily propaganda to whitewash themselves.
wonnage 13d ago
Yeah that’s why ea is like catnip for these folks, justify anything by some handy hallucination about how the outcome will help more than it hurts. Suffering is fungible
moolcool 13d ago
You can also use moral relativism to cope with doing basically anything unethical, especially so when you’re offered dump trucks full of money.
- cogman10 13d ago
  My point is that these articles are ineffective and miss the point. It's not about moral relativism but rather that morals aren't universally shared or understood. Ultimately, pretty much everyone feels like they are a good person, so "you doing a bad thing makes you bad" doesn't really square away especially when that person's personal moral calculus can see their actions as being a net good. It's pretty hard to shame someone out of a job even if most people view at as net negative on society (boat loads of money and all). That's why I disagree with all the framing of the article.
  - moolcool 13d ago
    That is addressed in the article. E.g. how Meta knows about the harms they’re actively causing, and carries on anyway. People and firms do things they know are wrong all the time.
  - dwaltrip 13d ago
    How do you know articles like this are ineffective? I know people in my life who have discomfort about their jobs at Meta because of how other people view the company. One of them is planning to leave in the next year or so. The impact may be hard to measure or rather diffuse, but in my experience, it is real.
alexchantavy 13d ago
I like the concept of deontological ethics where instead of just plain good and bad, we consider what is one’s duty. People make decisions based on who they are responsible for.
tetha 13d ago
I would rather say the argument is simplified, but on a decent track. Because there are two angles to it. I've been wondering what sectors I wouldn't maintain and develop infrastructure for, because I consider it a strength of mine that I don't entirely care about that. I'm not excited about your product, for good or bad. Defense for example is on an edge there. Supporting the creation of death and suffering in other humans does not sit right with me. Being defenseless doesn't sit right either, as it can create suffering and death for people I know as well. Online gambling is more on the nope side. Maybe with a decent regulated german company, but if you start working with some eastern-europan online video gambling sites with pretty girls as dealers, you are suddenly very close to human trafficking and many more things connected to it. So I guess directly causing human suffering and pain is a boundary for me. And yes, if you push that argument to an extreme, if you search long enough, you realize that pure existence causes suffering to other people, animals and the planet and must be ceased. But then there is that other side - in the current system (and arguably many before) you have to do a job to get money to live, and a lot of people like the person making cars have no choice about that. I guess we are contributing to that suffering as well by existing. So, minimizing the direct suffering and pain I cause seems to be a sensible directive.
mhitza 13d ago
I like to think of good in terms of direct positive effect, and bad in terms of direct negative externalities. Second order effects become too fuzzy. Do the people working for AI labs believe that it has a better direct beneficial effect, or makes for a worse outcome on society? What I've read thus far heavily lead me to believe that the balance is well tilted towards the negative. If you're one of the "f u got mine" belief system, you do not care about effects but only your wallet. This is also in some way how my perception has been tinted by effective altruists; which (through media representation) seem activiley present as employees at AI labs. Are those people actively donating away 10-20% of their base salary every year, or "whatever it takes to make me a billionaire" and "after that I'll do some philantrophy"? Effective altruism hasn't really crossed the atlantic into the balkans, feel free to correct me and elucidate me on the positive effects in the US of this ideology.
kelseyfrog 13d ago
To be crystal clear in case there is confusion, we should also not confuse "everything is a shade of gray," with "all grays are the same shade." We can still have moral good and bad, even subjective good and bad, without reducing everything to one or the other or placing everything in a non-existent moral center. Far too often a sliver of good is given equal weight to a enormous lot of bad. We should be ready to cut the cord far sooner than we do in practice.
JKCalhoun 13d ago
"Life isn't black and white with "good/bad"." Really? You can't think of an act in history that society might agree was evil? And I'm not sure why everything has to have a "measure". Someone who approaches the world we live in (and their own life) in such absolute, reductionist terms is living, in my opinion, a very ufortunate life.
phyzome 13d ago
"Nothing is simple, therefore it is impossible to act ethically."

graemep 13d ago

A few big good/bad decisions are more important than thousands of trivial decisions. Balancing good against bad is not clear, I agree, but that makes it all the more important to think about it when making a big decision such as what job to take. Its hard and people do not even agree about how to balance it - e.g. whether the ends justify the means.

cogman10 13d ago
Well that's my point. Someone working as a geologist for the oil industry can think climate change isn't real or not a problem so they can view their job of finding more oil as being a clear benefit for society. No amount of trying to tell them "But you are doing something bad by helping the oil industry" will make them reconsider if they are good or bad. But I also wouldn't say they are necessarily bad people. You can also simply just be wrong or misinformed when you make your moral calculation. Good people do bad things sometimes. Bad people do good things sometimes. That's why the framing of badness as a taint isn't really helpful IMO. It creates a "us vs them" sort of attitude that ultimately doesn't address whatever issue is at hand.

ArcHound 13d ago

I agree. In the particular case of AI companies, I think a handbrake should be pulled when they start claiming things like "10% chance we're ending humanity."

ReturnoftheHack 13d ago
[dead]

chrisjj 13d ago

> there's no objective measure of what is good or bad. Everything is a shade of gray. So, there's an ojective measure of shade of gray? /i Precision is not objectivity.

cogman10 13d ago
> So, there's an ojective measure of shade of gray? Very much no. More that almost all actions have good and bad impacts and how good or bad those impacts are can be judged completely differently between large groups of people. To someone that's Hindu, eating a cow is a supremely bad act. For your standard meat eater, it's just lunch. The cow eater is only a "bad person" to the Hindu. To them, the act is likely a white or light gray act.

dofm 13d ago

There may not be a definition of “good”. But there are several workable contextual definitions of bad; it’s your job to know what they are. For example: - it would cause a harm to someone who was not made aware of the risk up front. - it would cause someone to lose a job they didn’t know was under threat. - the way the harm occurs precludes its only corrective/curative action or has no adequate compensation. Bad things are almost always contextual but also almost always obvious in that context. You can’t avoid bad things that you can’t foresee. If you do not attempt to avoid, avert or mitigate bad things that you can foresee, then you are one of the bad things. Things may not always be black and white but it is wise not to seek the protection of the grey.

SaltyBackendGuy 13d ago
> it would cause someone to lose a job they didn’t know was under threat Under this guidance, wouldn't almost every technological advancement then qualify as bad? i.e. typewriter repair, etc.
- dofm 13d ago
  To address the second part of the sentence you quoted, in this generic “doesn’t progress mean all jobs are impermanent?” sense, don’t people generically understand their jobs are generically under threat at some baseline level from progress? It doesn’t absolve you from the harm of being specifically responsible. I mean everyone has to die someday but that doesn’t excuse murder.
  - deleted 13d ago
    [deleted]
wavemode 13d ago
But what if (as the commenter you're responding to stated) someone believes that AI will have a positive effect on humanity? Is it morally wrong for them to disagree with your view?
- 13d ago

12887-19 13d ago

Only bad things have happened so far in AI. This is why they need the daily propaganda to whitewash themselves.

wonnage 13d ago

Yeah that’s why ea is like catnip for these folks, justify anything by some handy hallucination about how the outcome will help more than it hurts. Suffering is fungible

moolcool 13d ago

You can also use moral relativism to cope with doing basically anything unethical, especially so when you’re offered dump trucks full of money.

cogman10 13d ago
My point is that these articles are ineffective and miss the point. It's not about moral relativism but rather that morals aren't universally shared or understood. Ultimately, pretty much everyone feels like they are a good person, so "you doing a bad thing makes you bad" doesn't really square away especially when that person's personal moral calculus can see their actions as being a net good. It's pretty hard to shame someone out of a job even if most people view at as net negative on society (boat loads of money and all). That's why I disagree with all the framing of the article.
- moolcool 13d ago
  That is addressed in the article. E.g. how Meta knows about the harms they’re actively causing, and carries on anyway. People and firms do things they know are wrong all the time.
- dwaltrip 13d ago
  How do you know articles like this are ineffective? I know people in my life who have discomfort about their jobs at Meta because of how other people view the company. One of them is planning to leave in the next year or so. The impact may be hard to measure or rather diffuse, but in my experience, it is real.

alexchantavy 13d ago

I like the concept of deontological ethics where instead of just plain good and bad, we consider what is one’s duty. People make decisions based on who they are responsible for.

tetha 13d ago

I would rather say the argument is simplified, but on a decent track. Because there are two angles to it. I've been wondering what sectors I wouldn't maintain and develop infrastructure for, because I consider it a strength of mine that I don't entirely care about that. I'm not excited about your product, for good or bad. Defense for example is on an edge there. Supporting the creation of death and suffering in other humans does not sit right with me. Being defenseless doesn't sit right either, as it can create suffering and death for people I know as well. Online gambling is more on the nope side. Maybe with a decent regulated german company, but if you start working with some eastern-europan online video gambling sites with pretty girls as dealers, you are suddenly very close to human trafficking and many more things connected to it. So I guess directly causing human suffering and pain is a boundary for me. And yes, if you push that argument to an extreme, if you search long enough, you realize that pure existence causes suffering to other people, animals and the planet and must be ceased. But then there is that other side - in the current system (and arguably many before) you have to do a job to get money to live, and a lot of people like the person making cars have no choice about that. I guess we are contributing to that suffering as well by existing. So, minimizing the direct suffering and pain I cause seems to be a sensible directive.

mhitza 13d ago

I like to think of good in terms of direct positive effect, and bad in terms of direct negative externalities. Second order effects become too fuzzy. Do the people working for AI labs believe that it has a better direct beneficial effect, or makes for a worse outcome on society? What I've read thus far heavily lead me to believe that the balance is well tilted towards the negative. If you're one of the "f u got mine" belief system, you do not care about effects but only your wallet. This is also in some way how my perception has been tinted by effective altruists; which (through media representation) seem activiley present as employees at AI labs. Are those people actively donating away 10-20% of their base salary every year, or "whatever it takes to make me a billionaire" and "after that I'll do some philantrophy"? Effective altruism hasn't really crossed the atlantic into the balkans, feel free to correct me and elucidate me on the positive effects in the US of this ideology.

kelseyfrog 13d ago

To be crystal clear in case there is confusion, we should also not confuse "everything is a shade of gray," with "all grays are the same shade." We can still have moral good and bad, even subjective good and bad, without reducing everything to one or the other or placing everything in a non-existent moral center. Far too often a sliver of good is given equal weight to a enormous lot of bad. We should be ready to cut the cord far sooner than we do in practice.

JKCalhoun 13d ago

"Life isn't black and white with "good/bad"." Really? You can't think of an act in history that society might agree was evil? And I'm not sure why everything has to have a "measure". Someone who approaches the world we live in (and their own life) in such absolute, reductionist terms is living, in my opinion, a very ufortunate life.

phyzome 13d ago

"Nothing is simple, therefore it is impossible to act ethically."