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I refused to train the AI that could replace me

restofworld.org

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Re: I refused to train the AI that could replace me

#83
post #15

People have objected to training their replacements since forever. Younger people, foreigners, now machines. What else is new? I don't think you are under any moral or ethical obligation to train your replacement. But I don't think the decision makes much of a difference one way or another in the grand scheme of things. > You may ask: Why would anyone agree to train an AI model in the very skills they took years to a…

Just like how the car gave us back so many more hours to spend actually living instead of working. And the washing machine. And the computer. And the Internet.

I don't think cars gave back many hours for the majority of people, they just increased the distance people travel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchetti's_constant

Re: I refused to train the AI that could replace me

#84
post #74
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>actually living... Watching TV...Or consuming social media..

Who am I to judge what other people decide to do with their freetime. It's not like lurking on HN is morally superior.

But you made that judgement already when you decided that people be better off not working...

Re: I refused to train the AI that could replace me

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to attack your good faith in humanity, so I will ask another way - if a system was reliant on workers, what reason would there be for those workers to exist , after their work became automated?

Why do humans need to work to exist? We just need a new model for existing that isn’t based on labor. We should have started working on these problems in 2016 when it was obvious they were coming, but we elected a regressive twice to help us go backwards instead.

> Why do humans need to work to exist?

What make life worth living? Is it love? Is it beauty? Is it the sense of having agency?

Sadly, we are not smart enough to know until it is taken away.....

Re: I refused to train the AI that could replace me

#86
post #71
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got it backwards. Society is simple the collective that forms transitively from you, your connections, theirs and so on. You are pointing at a tree and missing that it's standing in the forest.

> Society is simple the collective that forms transitively from you, your connections, theirs and so on. Where do you draw the line? Does the collective that makes these collective decisions you are so fond of have to include, say, people in Russia? You can default to existing political structures and voting systems as a preliminary answer to get going. And they work for some things. But ain't nothing simple nor god…

There is a subtlety here: on the one hand there are decisions that someone decides on and tries to enforce. On the other, there is collective behavior and what it does and doesn't tolerate - societal norms. The later forms in various ways and can overcome enforced decisions.

It's not on me to declare who is and isn't included or what consensus is being reached. These things normally play out in a self-organizing way.

But some companies try to disturb that process by not allowing it the time it needs. And I think this needs awareness.

Re: I refused to train the AI that could replace me

#87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They release women from housekeeping... to workplaces.

You should ask a working woman if she'd rather be at home doing dishes and laundry by hand without pay

Why would you put yourself in a jail 9 to 5 every day even if you get paid, if it can be spared?

Re: I refused to train the AI that could replace me

#88
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They release women from housekeeping... to workplaces.

You should ask a working woman if she'd rather be at home doing dishes and laundry by hand without pay

some in this thread call out the author for doing what he did without principle. while i dont agree with the argument applied there, i do apply it here. which is to say that feminism did enable some avenues of freedom to women, therefore i wonder how that act benefitted the system, and whether such freedom has culminated in net benefit for the common man & woman

Re: I refused to train the AI that could replace me

#89
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real problem with AI is that the productivity benefits are focused with the owners and not the workers. What makes you think so? What evidence do we have one way or another?

We are seeing workers get laid off to free up more money for AI and only the AI techies are making more money? It could be temporary, but the way AI is currently owned and structured, the owners and investors are positioned to reap almost all of the financial benefits whereas workers will just be expected to do more with AI for the same pay and hours worked.

Workers are getting hired and fired in all kinds of economic situations all the time. At the moment, overall (US) unemployment at 4.1% hasn't moved all that much since the end of the pandemic, and is on the lower end of average overall by historic standards. We don't see any impact from AI so far.

As far as I can tell so far, the benefits from AI seem to flow mostly into customer surplus, not towards owners and investors. There's just so much competition between AI providers for anyone but customers to capture the benefits.

Re: I refused to train the AI that could replace me

#90
post #84
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who am I to judge what other people decide to do with their freetime. It's not like lurking on HN is morally superior.

But you made that judgement already when you decided that people be better off not working...

My judgement is that all else being equal, I defer to people's wishes to decide what they want to do with their time.

Even in AI times, you can still spend years acquiring obsolete skills. Just like people still run for fun, even though the bicycle has already been invented. Or they make their own music by hand, instead of turning on the radio.

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