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To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

musings.martyn.berlin

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Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#311

Post by Timon3 »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #116

The post links to a pretty silly article with checkboxes about "accepting" certain "facts" about AI, which the author says they resonated with: > I accept the models were trained on stolen data. "Stolen" is a moral stance that not everyone agrees with. > I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers. Yes - and you just ordered DoorDash, which delivered food made by exploited workers and delivered by exploit…

I disagree with multiple of your responses, but I'd like to push back on this point in particular:

> Yes - and you just ordered DoorDash, which delivered food made by exploited workers and delivered by exploited workers. In fact, almost every convenience you enjoy is the result of some level of exploitation. That doesn't mean it's morally right, but if your outrage is pointed at GenAI (one of the technologies that can potentially level the playing field and remove some amount of exploitation) at the exclusion of these other things, you are simply rage farming.

You could have made the same point without the baseless accusation of bigotry. But even if it's true, it would still be the "You think we should improve society, yet you live in it" meme in action. Exploitation is not a binary state (some workers are exploited worse than others), and if the author believes that AI will broadly lead to much more/worse exploitation, watering down their actual point would only make their stance less likely to be heard.

And if they mentioned DoorDash workers, would you actually be satisfied? Or would you be looking for the next group of exploited workers that aren't included?

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#312

Post by arvid-lind »

thunky wrote: post #226
arvid-lind wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Not sure if you like to work on your own cars, but would you also feel like you're accumulating negative karma for associating with the automotive and fossil fuel industries? We're not responsible for the world that is here right now, but we have to figure out how to operate within it. The idea that "we earned this" like we're all at fault for the state of things seems pretty far off. Not trying to say you're…

I don't think your analogy fits. Tech is directly responsible for automation, which impacts jobs. Tech workers didn't cry moral outrage then. But mow that tech may automate their job, suddenly it's evil.

My point was that the world we have is here, for better or worse, and "reaping what we sowed" seems like a wildly reductive and self-defeating interpretation. There's no way this guy who says he never worked directly on automation-related tech should feel like he's banking bad karma by earning a living doing the best he can. I'm assuming that not working in automation was a conscious decision, like I've also been very selective about my employers based on their general operating philosophies.

The analogy wasn't the best, but the whole of tech isn't on the hook for this. Just like a typical daily driver or someone who works on their own car can't be directly responsible for the climate crisis. There are major players making the decisions that are causing the state we're in.

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#313

Post by TaupeRanger »

Timon3 wrote: post #311
TaupeRanger wrote: post #116

The post links to a pretty silly article with checkboxes about "accepting" certain "facts" about AI, which the author says they resonated with: > I accept the models were trained on stolen data. "Stolen" is a moral stance that not everyone agrees with. > I accept that the data was labeled by exploited workers. Yes - and you just ordered DoorDash, which delivered food made by exploited workers and delivered by exploit…

I disagree with multiple of your responses, but I'd like to push back on this point in particular: > Yes - and you just ordered DoorDash, which delivered food made by exploited workers and delivered by exploited workers. In fact, almost every convenience you enjoy is the result of some level of exploitation. That doesn't mean it's morally right, but if your outrage is pointed at GenAI (one of the technologies that ca…

Nuance would make the points stronger, not weaker. If you complain about something while assuming everyone should agree with you without question, you are not contributing to the conversation, but merely whining.

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#314

Post by Timon3 »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #313
Timon3 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with multiple of your responses, but I'd like to push back on this point in particular: > Yes - and you just ordered DoorDash, which delivered food made by exploited workers and delivered by exploited workers. In fact, almost every convenience you enjoy is the result of some level of exploitation. That doesn't mean it's morally right, but if your outrage is pointed at GenAI (one of the technologies that ca…

Nuance would make the points stronger, not weaker. If you complain about something while assuming everyone should agree with you without question, you are not contributing to the conversation, but merely whining.

Sure, but including more groups of exploited workers wouldn't have made the author's point more nuanced. And ironically, throwing around baseless accusations (like "you just ordered DoorDash" and "if you actually cared about the environment") will only serve to make the conversation less nuanced.

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#315

Post by Schmerika »

mlyle wrote: post #242
Schmerika wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's clear the author thinks his' is the moral stance If you don't think your moral stance is the correct one - then why aren't you changing your moral stance? Why do you have one at all? It's ok to have strong opinions on morality, and it's cool to live by them, and good to talk about them. I don't happen to completely agree with the author, but I can respect a belief in one's own considered opinion, and the right…

> If you don't think your moral stance is the correct one That's not what's asserted. The title is "To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast" But the reality is "To have his moral stance is to be a self-imposed outcast".

Yes, he thinks his moral stance is the correct one, and lives by it.

... And?

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#316

Post by okeuro49 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #44
okeuro49 wrote: post #10

Its funny that the article uses Wikipedia as an example, given it is a tool that always needs a caveat: "anyone can edit it, always use the source, never trust it directly." There are many instances where I have seen Wikipedia have bias, or be misinformation. AI just needs the caveat that it is not really intelligent, but a very good predictive text machine, which you should always ask to provide citations.

"Really not intelligent," yet capable of taking gold at international math and programming competitions.

The ability to solve maths problems still doesn't mean it is intelligent.

It doesn't know what it is doing.

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#317

Post by marcosdumay »

queenkjuul wrote: post #264
joquarky wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an aside: why have we allowed marketing people to take over?

Unfortunately the West has yet to have their socialist revolutions

What's "the West"?

UK an Germany practically invented the concept, and the US practically wrote the manual on how to make a welfare state.

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#318

Post by JsonDemWitOster »

yallpendantools wrote: post #158
YoukaiCountry wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could show people 20 years ago what we have now, I have no doubt most people would have considered it AI. We can have actual conversations with our computers, they can now interact with tools they are provided, and act in a reasonably intelligent manner for a great many tasks. 20-year-ago-me would have barely been able to believe it. Is this sort of stance that this "isn't AI" missing the forest for the trees?

I think it's not so much the technical scope that makes it "not the AI you read of as a child" but the societal impact. AI/robots/automation was supposed to usher in some kind of techno-utopia for all the good and bad that it entails. Cue the quote about AI supposedly about taking over the boring tasks so we can spend more time making art, achieving self-actualization. The AI you read of as a child (speaking for myse…

Wow. Palantirians (or whatever tf they call themselves) have no reply other than downvotes? Couldn't even get ChatGPT to astroturf an advocacy?

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#319

Post by phil21 »

w29UiIm2Xz wrote: post #193
tptacek wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as long as you understand that this is how everybody else not in technology, from accountants to East Coast dockworkers and all points in between, have felt about everything we do in this field for the past 50 years. It's awfully tough to adopt a morally rigorous position about "lower compensation" when you're literally in the business of automating jobs away.

Those people could've traded up. And plenty of people in the trades have done that. But now, it is not obvious what 'trading up' in this situation is. There was optionality: upskill and increase your compensation. Now, there may be no opportunity to upskill. And that is a meaningfully different environment. The other aspect to this is many of us spent our pre-LLM days writing basic CRUD apps for a living (and many of…

> Those people could've traded up. And plenty of people in the trades have done that.

This is precisely the karma that is coming to us as a group. Because of this sort of stuff.

No, a 50 year old trade worker cannot "trade up" in any realistic sense. That's idiotic on it's face. And that also ignores that many folks don't want to trade up because they get satisfaction in what they do - just like some tech workers do. Man of those folks also had moral and ethical reasons to not want to join an industry assisting in putting their friends and family out of work.

> The other aspect to this is many of us spent our pre-LLM days writing basic CRUD apps for a living

AKA automating other jobs away in many (perhaps most?) cases. Either directly or indirectly. These line-of-business applications tend to be automation of some sort which reduces manual labor. Be it on the factory floor, enabling that factory to be outsourced to China, or just making "paperwork" more efficient putting an office full of secretaries out of a job. Or working in some ad-tech enabled field which put entire industries out of work altogether.

> we didn't meaningfully contribute to the rise of LLM technology. Very little of anything I did was in the public domain for training.

Factory workers, skilled machinists, tool and die manufacturers, secretaries, accountants, journalists - effectively an infinite list - did not contribute to the IT over the past 30 years that replaced them either. That's the point being made in this sub-thread.

But hey, you could always pivot your career to be a plumber, roofer, or electrician! While I'm certainly going to be part of the targeted group, I can't really say I'll be surprised at the working class laughing at us and enjoying IT folks getting their comeuppance.

I haven't found a way to articulate my thoughts very well on this subject, others do it better even on HN. But coming from a working class family with most of my old school friends from growing up still working blue collar jobs - I can say it's been incredibly uncomfortable listening to the narratives from tech workers on these subjects for 25 years. It's been utterly amazing to me how people switched on a dime within a couple years on the subject now that their livelihoods are on the line. The calls for free markets, pro-automation, "just learn to code", anti-regulation, etc. all instantly changed the moment such folks had even a trivial amount of similar pressure put on them.

Re: To have a moral stance on AI is to be an outcast, and it sucks

#320

Post by phil21 »

queenkjuul wrote: post #266
tptacek wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as long as you understand that this is how everybody else not in technology, from accountants to East Coast dockworkers and all points in between, have felt about everything we do in this field for the past 50 years. It's awfully tough to adopt a morally rigorous position about "lower compensation" when you're literally in the business of automating jobs away.

Ah yeah, lowly web dev me, self-taught with no capital, is responsible for the choices of faceless corporations and sinister magnates I've never worked for nor interacted with nor influenced in even an infinitesimal way. I've never worked on software that automated someone's job away. But because I'm a programmer at all, it's partially my fault?

> I've never worked on software that automated someone's job away.

I think this would be very difficult to do as a web-dev. The web itself is a form of global scale automation in-itself.

I am also a self-taught tech nerd. I have not "directly" worked on any specific automation project in terms of "come put this group out of work" - but I can't think of a single project I worked on that wasn't making current processes more efficient and automated - by largely removing remaining manual steps involved. This is why we exist to begin with, otherwise no one would be paying us to do the work.

I wrote software that took server provisioning from a process that involved a tech typing on a keyboard every time, to clicking a button on a webUI to install an OS. A task many here at HN have done just for their home lab environment so as to make their own lives more efficient.

This put zero people out of work. But it probably prevented hiring of at last a handful of low-level technicians over the course of that software's lifecycle. Which is the same thing to an industry at large.

Even stuff as simple as writing code to put up a new post on a company website is contributing towards automating someone's job away.

I have often stated computers are the ultimate robot. They fit in nearly every industry to automate things and make processes more efficient. These are code words for "less human labor needed" - aka less jobs.

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