| ▲ | dofm 5 hours 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 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > 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 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | 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. | | |
|
|
| ▲ | arrowleaf 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| "- it would cause someone to lose a job they didn’t know was under threat." Most of my life's work has been in areas of increasing productivity. Is that good or bad? On the good side of the spectrum, it reduces the time hundred of people need to spend on mundane tasks, or reducing the amount of mentally taxing complexity. On the bad side, based on this definition, there is less of a need to hire someone with specialized talent when the software can handle what their job function would be. I've always felt kind of bad helping companies automate people out of jobs, that's the core of what most of us writing software are doing. Maybe I am a bad person. |
| |
| ▲ | dofm 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > that's the core of what most of us writing software are doing Is that necessarily so? | | |
| ▲ | arrowleaf 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | No, there are many mission-driven companies from enterprises to startups, but in the USA most software engineers work for Fortune 500 (or Russell 2000, or aspiring) whose underlying mission is extracting profit from revenue. |
|
|
|
| ▲ | wavemode 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| 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? |
| |
| ▲ | dofm 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I personally think taking part in an industry that openly and casually argues that the insane losses being racked up are fully affordable as long as people are permanently taken out of the workforce is immoral, yes. Pan-industrial job loss is a harm. Leaning on "I did what I thought was right for humanity" while not addressing the harms to people along the way is not moral. Other people can draw their own conclusions. | | |
| ▲ | wavemode 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Personally, I don't know if AI will be a net-positive or net-negative for mankind, but if it's negative it's overwhelmingly likely that it will be due to environmental and/or energy usage concerns. That is, we ought to limit the power consumption and force companies to work more efficiently and sustainably, rather than limiting the research itself. Arguments as old as time that a new form of automation will put people out of jobs are just not compelling to me, I'm sorry. I also don't believe it's likely that LLMs will ever be ASI, nor ever evil and sentient. | | |
| ▲ | dofm 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Arguments as old as time that a new form of automation will put people out of jobs are just not compelling to me, I'm sorry. I also don't believe it's likely that LLMs will ever be ASI, nor ever evil and sentient. I didn't make either of these arguments. I was literally talking about what "bad" means, contextually, in the context of a job, responding to the idea that most people just don't see "good/bad" issues in their jobs. When almost all of us do, in fact, see harms we should reduce. Just often smaller harms. One of the problems in the tech industry is that people always say "well sure, but…" and then try to expand the scenario to an amoral Thanos-level so they can wriggle off what might actually in many cases be much more personal, contextually obvious hooks. "It happens, I shouldn't worry about my part in it" is not a moral framework. |
|
|
|
