Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

thewire.in

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 277 posts

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#231

Post by pmelendez »

_djo_ wrote: post #90
yanderekko wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human? If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the le…

No, the implication is that we believe that these algorithms are non-faulty and therefore throw away all the provisions for recourse and review that exist with human-driven systems. There is no nuance, no leeway, and no way for you to reason your case with a thinking human on the other side of the decision. The algorithms & systems are also almost always completely opaque in their workings, with neither the person on…

>No, the implication is that we believe that these algorithms are non-faulty

I think that falls under OC's argument and it seems eventually solvable. Still, what you are pointing is a human bias. Humans have been taking similar unfair decisions without possibility for recourse or review since forever, so it would be interesting to have a review mechanism in general.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#232

Post by TFYS »

whitepaint wrote: post #217
TFYS wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? He would have another idea and try to get another reward for that. If it's the biggest possible reward that you can get, and you have an idea, why wouldn't you try to implement it? The rewards for a successful business 50 years ago were much smaller than they are today, yet people still created businesses, because it was the best reward you could get. They didn't have an idea and abandon it because the bigge…

> If it's the biggest possible reward that you can get, and you have an idea, why wouldn't you try to implement it? Because it takes lots of work, risk, and sacrifice. If rewards are small (which, obviously, they would be in your scenario where people pool their money together to reward someone), then why take on such difficult task? I know I wouldn't be trying to do any business in your system. Many wouldn't.

The rewards don't have to be small if everyone in the country participates in the pool through taxes. Maybe not in the billions like in the current system, but plenty big enough to encourage people that have ideas.

The risk part is a problem, I agree. If the risk is larger than the potential reward, it isn't worth it. The risk should somehow be collectively handled as well.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#233

Post by pessimizer »

sk4rekr0w wrote: post #23
skohan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why unions get trounced in votes by real workers, things like Prop 22 pass with easy margins, etc. I think it also has to do with the massive discrepancy in resources pro and anti-union advocates are able to put towards those races. Uber and Lyft invested massively in defeating prop 22, even advertising in their app directly.

While I don't like the economic resource discrepancy in that case, there was mutually dirty fighting.. the ballot language on Prop 22 by the AG was what I would consider literal propaganda. What they lack in economic resources, they make up for in political power via bureaucratic control.

> the ballot language on Prop 22 by the AG was what I would consider literal propaganda.

What does this mean and why aren't you being specific about what you're saying was dirty fighting? You're omitting your argument and just leaving the FUD.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#234

Post by urthor »

MattGaiser wrote: post #7

Isn't Amazon's fear of running out of people a sign of the market correcting this?

No, if Amazon was afraid they would have changed things.

Amazon will have run the numbers, they'll have an elastic pay scale to respond with if things go downhill.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#235

Post by pitkali »

golergka wrote: post #54
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

> Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. Why do people treat working for a company as something different from selling any other services or goods? If there was a law that limited your ability to cancel a gym membership or going to a different supermarket, you would rightfully object — it's not a government's business to get involved in your…

Probably because people's livelihoods depend on employment and they have much less power on the markets as individuals than companies.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#236

Post by howaboutnope »

pc86 wrote: post #215
howaboutnope wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So is the implication here that humans are less faulty AI is just humans hiding behind a machine. And everything else being the same, those who have to hide their reasons or themselves are always intrinsically weaker and worth less than those who don't. That needs no explanation for people who own their shit, and no explanation will suffice for those who do. > that will likely be unfortunate for consumers. Consumer…

> AI is just humans hiding behind a machine. Just because people work on AI algorithms doesn't mean that this is true.

When an AI "decides" that someone should have no food tomorrow, there's always a human who set the AI up to do that, and there's always humans who honor this "decision", often while pretending that they have no choice, that they're mere messengers. No exceptions.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#237

Post by bryanrasmussen »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #216
whitepaint wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that the problem lies in people losing faith in a god and in a church? Were people happier when they were more religious and when a church told them what's good and bad? And now we don't have that? And we should seek to replace it and the problems will lessen?

I don't feel qualified to answer that. All I know is that something will fill the god-shaped hole. Pray it won't be communism or Critical Race Theory.

but who should I pray to then?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#238

Post by contravariant »

eric4smith wrote: post #175

Wow… a guy that directly employed almost 2 million people and indirectly improved the lives of tens of millions of dependents in the Amazon ecosystem is a dystopian person. Bezos is far from perfect, but do we really think that that was his primary consideration of building and growing Amazon? Pretty much every organization that gets large enough tends to rot from the inside and get dystopian, despite the efforts of…

Is it really that unfair to blame the guy who profited most from it? If as you say increasing the size of an organization inevitably leads to a dystopian behemoth shouldn't we condemn people who do exactly that to grow their wealth?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#239

Post by pitkali »

cookieswumchorr wrote: post #159
nabla9 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland and Hungary are in violation of many articles of EU. The grievance is that the US lacks many of those articles. Principles of EU > Principles of US >>>> Principles of China.

the Poland/Hungary point relates to the recent issues with abortions and gay rights respectively. The rules in these cases may be more progressive at least in parts of the US. But if you take labor rights, these are a lot more humane in the EU

Poland is also sabotaging independence of the courts in attacks on democratic principles.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Dystopian Legacy Goes Far Beyond Amazon

#240

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

yanderekko wrote: post #71
fxtentacle wrote: post #50

Reading this, I'm so glad that in all of the EU it is illegal to fire someone purely based on a software decision. There's a minimum level of humanity that we should extend to everyone. Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. I'm not surprised that treating humans like cattle on their way to slaughter is hugely profitable. But I'm not sure we want to opera…

>Letting a known faulty AI decide if someone will have money for food tomorrow is way across the line. So is the implication here that humans are less faulty, or that there's something intrinsically wrong about an AI making this decision rather than a human? If the former, then this is an issue that the technology will probably eventually solve. If the latter, well... that doesn't seem very justifiable, to say the le…

But a lot of fateful decisions are already made by computers. Decisions about granting a loan, an entry visa or insurance policy are largely automated today. If there are humans in the chain, they are mostly there to type data into the computer and don't have any decision power.
Post reply on HN