Comment by paulsutter
Comment by paulsutter 2 days ago
> we won’t work on product marketing for AI stuff, from a moral standpoint
Can someone explain this?
Comment by paulsutter 2 days ago
> we won’t work on product marketing for AI stuff, from a moral standpoint
Can someone explain this?
I'm fairly sure all the first three points are true for each new human produced. The environmental cost vs output is probably significantly higher per human, and the population continues to grow.
My experience with large companies (especially American Tech) is that they always try and deliver the product as cheap as possible, are usually evil and never cared about social impacts. And HN has been steadily complaining about the lowering of quality of search results for at least a decade.
I think your points are probably a fair snapshot of peoples moral issue, but I think they're also fairly weak when you view them in the context of how these types of companies have operated for decades. I suspect people are worried for their jobs and cling to a reasonable sounding morality point so they don't have to admit that.
These points are so wide and multi dimensionsal that one must really wonder whether they were looking for reasons for concern.
Let's put aside the fact that the person you replied to was trying to represent a diversity of views and not attribute them all to one individual, including the author of the article.
Should people not look for reasons to be concerned?
I can show you many instances of people or organisations representing diversity of views. Example: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy
Okay. Why are we comparing a commentor answering a question to a FOSS organization who wants to align contributiors? You seem to have completely side tracked the conversation you started.
i have noticed this pattern too frequently https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy
see the diversity of views.
Some folks have moral concerns about AI. They include:
* The environmental cost of inference in aggregate and training in specific is non-negligible
* Training is performed (it is assumed) with material that was not consented to be trained upon. Some consider this to be akin to plagiarism or even theft.
* AI displaces labor, weakening the workers across all industries, but especially junior folks. This consolidates power into the hands of the people selling AI.
* The primary companies who are selling AI products have, at times, controversial pasts or leaders.
* Many products are adding AI where it makes little sense, and those systems are performing poorly. Nevertheless, some companies shove short AI everywhere, cheapening products across a range of industries.
* The social impacts of AI, particularly generative media and shopping in places like YouTube, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, etc are not well understood and could contribute to increased radicalization and Balkanization.
* AI is enabling an attention Gish-gallop in places like search engines, where good results are being shoved out by slop.
Hopefully you can read these and understand why someone might have moral concerns, even if you do not. (These are not my opinions, but they are opinions other people hold strongly. Please don't downvote me for trying to provide a neutral answer to this person's question.)