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Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

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Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#721

Post by jstummbillig »

47282847 wrote: post #663
jstummbillig wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job. What...? In what way is it anything other than highly unethical to sabotage someone you have a contract with, because you disagree with them?

Plenty of historical examples of work environments where sabotage would have been the most ethical thing to do (and often you will only know in hindsight). But yeah in most circumstances a simple disagreement doesn’t warrant the psychological cost of such sabotage.

What do you mean...? Plenty to do what?

Your opinion of the situation is not enough to justify this course of action in 99.99% of cases and the residual 0.01% should not be enough to fuel your ego to do anything other than quit decently, and look for an employer that is more aligned with whatever your ideals are.

I repeat the insane statement that we are arguing over here: "Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job."

This says: ANY company you work for and disagree with over anything: Don't quit! Sabotage [maybe people are confused about what "do a bad job" means, and that this usually leads to other people getting hurt in some way, directly or indirectly, unless your job is entirely inconsequential]. And that's supposed to be ethically optimal.

What the fuck?

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#722

Post by heraldgeezer »

LightBug1 wrote: post #716
snackerblues wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any use case that you couldn't post about on your company Slack.

So we're talking about NSFW content? "NSFW stands for "Not Safe For Work" (or "Not Suitable For Work"), an internet abbreviation used as a warning label for explicit, graphic, or suggestive content. It indicates that material—typically involving nudity, pornography, or violence—is inappropriate for viewing in professional or public environments" Again, I'm still scratching my head about why I would be posting NSFW co…

ERP is part of it for sure.

I find there are 2 AI camps. People that use the chatbots for NSFW, writing, creative writing, research, text stuff, researching clothes, movies, methods for life, cleaning, therapy bots.

And here on HN where its only code and claude code.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#723

Post by tw04 »

echelon wrote: post #375
dgxyz wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I worked at one of them. I found the best thing to do was to ignore the interrupts and carry on until they kick you on the street. Then watch from a safe distance as all the stuff you were holding together shits the bed.

Why did Tesla work initially? Because they were first to market and people were willing to overlook flaws? When did it start falling apart? Why hasn't the same happened to SpaceX? (Gov contracts, too big to fail, national defense, no competition yet, etc.?) And honestly, why hasn't anyone domestically put up a decent fight against Tesla? Best I can think of is Rivian, and those have their own issues.

Lucid has eaten all of their high end sales. Their mid-size SUV will likely take a sizable chunk out of the Y too.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#724

Post by numpad0 »

eucyclos wrote: post #681
numpad0 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They must have outcompeted Musk at intelligence and/or insanity with their dedication into maximizing production volume of liquid fueled rocket engines. Tom Mueller was a VP of propulsion at TRW Inc., which, among numerous other things you know from textbooks, made the Apollo LM descent engine, as well as early Space Shuttle TDRS data relay system sats. Calling Mueller a guy interested with engines having issues with…

Seeing Elon buy Twitter was like watching a functional alcoholic I admire buy a bar.

To me it was more like watching an old lady watering IE toolbars at a Mcdonald's. Nobody knows what's the deal with her never cancelling any InstallShields, oh wait, here comes another WinRAR installer... aaand a reboot.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#725

Post by freeone3000 »

jstummbillig wrote: post #659
hananova wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job. I have been in such a situation before, and while I was not able to coast along until the company went under, the time delta between me getting fired and the company going under was measured in weeks. In hindsight I'd p…

> Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action if you can stomach it is to stay and do a bad job rather than get replaced by someone who might do a good job. What...? In what way is it anything other than highly unethical to sabotage someone you have a contract with, because you disagree with them?

Have we gotten so lost that “working against your enemies” is no longer something we aspire to do?

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#726

Post by softwaredoug »

moogly wrote: post #234

I feel xAI is just a very big version of the Boring Co. "flamethrower": an unserious endeavor which is just a reskinned existing tool (it was a reskinned weed burner), but people were wowed by it anyway, since Musk was behind it, and they all pretended it was something new and notable. The burning (heh) question is which SpaceX subsidiary will fail first, xAI or Tesla (not yet a subsidiary, but it's written in the st…

Crazy thing is if Hormuz stays closed, Tesla could theoretically be positioned to reap massive benefits. But they seem to be moving away from consumer electric cars as their focus.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#727

Post by berdario »

jstummbillig wrote: post #721
47282847 wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of historical examples of work environments where sabotage would have been the most ethical thing to do (and often you will only know in hindsight). But yeah in most circumstances a simple disagreement doesn’t warrant the psychological cost of such sabotage.

What do you mean...? Plenty to do what? Your opinion of the situation is not enough to justify this course of action in 99.99% of cases and the residual 0.01% should not be enough to fuel your ego to do anything other than quit decently, and look for an employer that is more aligned with whatever your ideals are. I repeat the insane statement that we are arguing over here: "Ethically, if you do not agree with the com…

I think there's a bit of confusion between

> (Ethically, if you do not agree with the company you work at), the optimal course of action is..

And

> Ethically, (if you do not agree with the company you work at, the optimal course of action is...)

The former, should've probably been phrased "if you do not agree ethically with the company you work at, the optimal course of action is..."

First example that comes to mind, about a movie that portrays ethical sabotage is

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler%27s_List

I'm actually a bit unsure about what could be the motivations of someone who engages in sabotage *not* for ethical reasons

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#728

Post by John23832 »

pavlov wrote: post #693
actsasbuffoon wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have wondered if that’s why Grok seems so weird and dim-witted compared to better models. Part of my job involves comparing the behavior of various models. Grok is a deeply weird model. It doesn’t refuse to respond as often as other models, but it feels like it retreats to weird talking points way more often than the others. It feels like a model that has a gun to its head to say what its creators want it to say. I…

This kind of conditioning has to be damaging to the model’s reasoning. Consider how research worked in the Stalinist Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Scientists had to be mindful of topics where they needed to either avoid it completely or explicitly adapt it to the leader’s ideology. Grok is a digital version of the same thing.

The counter to this are the open weight models that come from China at the moment.

All are great at reasoning but also ideologically aligned.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#729

Post by andrewingram »

jstummbillig wrote: post #721
47282847 wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of historical examples of work environments where sabotage would have been the most ethical thing to do (and often you will only know in hindsight). But yeah in most circumstances a simple disagreement doesn’t warrant the psychological cost of such sabotage.

What do you mean...? Plenty to do what? Your opinion of the situation is not enough to justify this course of action in 99.99% of cases and the residual 0.01% should not be enough to fuel your ego to do anything other than quit decently, and look for an employer that is more aligned with whatever your ideals are. I repeat the insane statement that we are arguing over here: "Ethically, if you do not agree with the com…

There's a _big_ continuum between disagreeing over something and an ethical hard line, it feels like a slippery slope to interpete a suggested approach for one end of that line as advocacy for applying that same approach to the other end.

Re: Elon Musk pushes out more xAI founders as AI coding effort falters

#730

Post by [deleted] »

jstummbillig wrote: post #721
47282847 wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of historical examples of work environments where sabotage would have been the most ethical thing to do (and often you will only know in hindsight). But yeah in most circumstances a simple disagreement doesn’t warrant the psychological cost of such sabotage.

What do you mean...? Plenty to do what? Your opinion of the situation is not enough to justify this course of action in 99.99% of cases and the residual 0.01% should not be enough to fuel your ego to do anything other than quit decently, and look for an employer that is more aligned with whatever your ideals are. I repeat the insane statement that we are arguing over here: "Ethically, if you do not agree with the com…

[deleted]
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