Comment by BrenBarn 2 days ago
In contrast to others, I just want to say that I applaud the decision to take a moral stance against AI, and I wish more people would do that. Saying "well you have to follow the market" is such a cravenly amoral perspective.
I still don’t blame anyone for trying to chart a different course though. It’s truly depressing to have to accept that the only way to make a living in a field is to compromise your principles.
The ideal version of my job would be partnering with all the local businesses around me that I know and love, elevating their online facilities to let all of us thrive. But the money simply isn’t there. Instead their profits and my happiness are funnelled through corporate behemoths. I’ll applaud anyone who is willing to step outside of that.
> It’s truly depressing to have to accept that the only way to make a living in a field is to compromise your principles.
Of course. If you want the world to go back to how it was before, you’re going to be very depressed in any business.
That’s why I said your only real options are going with the market or finding a different line of work. Technically there’s a third option where you stay put and watch bank accounts decline until you’re forced to choose one of the first two options, but it’s never as satisfying in retrospect as you imagined that small act of protest would have been.
I don't think we're really disagreeing here. You're saying "this is the way things are", I'm saying "I salute anyone who tries to change the way things are".
Even in the linked post the author isn't complaining that it's not fair or whatever, they're simply stating that they are losing money as a result of their moral choice. I don't think they're deluded about the cause and effect.
> It’s truly depressing to have to accept that the only way to make a living in a field is to compromise your principles.
Isn't that what money is though, a way to get people to stop what they're doing and do what you want them to instead? It's how Rome bent its conquests to its will and we've been doing it ever since.
It's a deeply broken system but I think that acknowledging it as such is the first step towards replacing it with something less broken.
Some users might not mind the lack of control, but beyond a certain point it stops making sense to strive to be in that diminishing set and starts making sense to fix the bug.
We've always tolerated a certain portion of society who finds the situation unacceptable, but don't you suspect that things will change if that portion is most of us?
Maybe we're not there yet, idk, but the article is about the unease vs the data, and I think the unease comes from the awareness that that's where we're headed.
>Isn't that what money is though
If you're only raised in a grifter's society, sure. Money is to be conquered and extracted.
But we came definetly shift back to a society where money is one to help keep the boat afloat for everyone to pursue their own interests, and not a losing game of Monopoly where the rich get richer.
I was talking to a friend of mine about a related topic when he quipped that he realized he started disliking therapy when he realized they effectively were just teaching him coping strategies for an economic system that is inherently amoral.
> So practically speaking, the options are follow the market or find a different line of work if you don’t like the way the market is going.
You're correct in this, but I think it's worth making the explicit statement that that's also true because we live in a system of amoral resource allocation.
Yes, this is a forum centered on startups, so there's a certain economic bias at play, but on the subject of morality I think there's a fair case to be made that it's reasonable to want to oppose an inherently unjust system and to be frustrated that doing so makes survival difficult.
We shouldn't have to choose between principles and food on the table.
> We shouldn't have to choose between principles and food on the table.
I am increasingly convinced that these are the only true kind of ethical decision. Painless/straightforward ethical decisions that you make every day - they probably don't even register on your radar. But a tough tradeoff does.
Sometimes companies become irrelevant while following the market, while other companies revolutionize the market by NOT following it.
It's not "swim with the tide or die", it's "float like a corpse down the river, or swim". Which direction you swim in will certainly be a different level of effort, and you can end up as a corpse no matter what, but that doesn't mean the only option you have is to give up.
>the options are follow the market or find a different line of work if you don’t like the way the market is going
You can also just outlive the irrationality. If we could stop beating around the bush and admit we're in a recession, that would explain a lot of things. You just gotta bear the storm.
It's way too late to jump on the AI train anyway. Maybe one more year, but I'd be surprised if that bubble doesn't pop by the end of 2027.
No, of course you don't have to – but don't torture yourself. If the market is all AI, and you are a service provider that does not want to work with AI at all then get out of the business.
If you found it unacceptable to work with companies that used any kind of digital database (because you found centralization of information and the amount of processing and analytics this enables unbecoming) then you should probably look for another venture instead of finding companies that commit to pen and paper.
> If the market is all AI, and you are a service provider that does not want to work with AI at all then get out of the business.
Maybe they will, and I bet they'll be content doing that. I personally don't work with AI and try my best to not to train it. I left GitHub & Reddit because of this, and not uploading new photos to Instagram. The jury is still out on how I'm gonna share my photography, and not sharing it is on the table, as well.
I may even move to a cathedral model or just stop sharing the software I write with the general world, too.
Nobody has to bend and act against their values and conscience just because others are doing it, and the system is demanding to betray ourselves for its own benefit.
Life is more nuanced than that.
Before that AI craze, I liked the idea of having a CC BY-NC-ND[0] public gallery to show what I took. I was not after any likes or anything. If I got professional feedback, that'd be a bonus. I even allowed EXIF-intact high resolution versions to be downloaded.
Now, I'll probably install a gallery webapp to my webserver and put it behind authentication. I'm not rushing because I don't crave any interaction from my photography. The images will most probably be optimized and resized to save some storage space, as well.
Good on you. Maybe some future innovation will afford everyone the same opportunity.
That future innovation is called "policy that doesn't screw over the working class".
Not that innovative, but hey. If it let's someone pretend it is and fixes the problem, I'm all for it.
That future innovation is in fact higher productivity. Equality is super important but we are simply not good enough yet at what we do, societally, for everyone everywhere to live as good a life as we enjoy, regardless of how we distribute.
This metaphor implies a sort of AI inevitably. I simply don't believe that's the case. At least, not this wave of AI.
The people pushing AI aren't listening to the true demand for AI. This, its not making ita money back. That's why this market is broken and not prone to last.
Printing press and copying scribes is a sarcastic comment, but these web designers are still actively working and their industry is 100s of years from the state of those old techs. The joke isn’t funny enough nor is the analogy apt enough to make sense.
No it is a pretty good comparison. There is absolutely AI slop but you have to be sticking your head in the sand if you don’t think AI will not continue to shape this industry. If you are selling learning courses and are sticking your head in the sand, well that’s pretty questionable.
>but you have to be sticking your head in the sand if you don’t think AI will not continue to shape this industry.
Maybe ot will. I'm still waiting for the utility. Right now it's just a big hype bubble, so wake me when it pops.
It’s almost a trope. You have one one end of the spectrum people like yourself who have nothing to say but it’s a hype bubble and there is no utility. On the other end you have folks making YouTube videos that they are building 100 apps in a day using LLMs. The truth is somewhere in the middle and I think to dismiss it like yourself is missing the boat that is sailing off.
If the market is immoral, following it is immoral. And it seems like more of society is disagreeing that AI is moral.
I find this very generic what you are saying and they.
What stance against AI? Image generation is not the same as code generation.
There are so many open source projects out there, its a huge difference than taking all the images.
AI is also just ML so should i not use image bounding box algorithm? Am i not allowed to take training data online or are only big companies not allowed to?
I understand this stance, but I'd personally differentiate between taking the moral stand as a consumer, where you actively become part of the growth in demmand that fuels further investment, and as a contractor, where you're a temporary cost, especially if you and people who depend on you necessitate it to survive.
A studio taking on temporary projects isn't investing into AI— they're not getting paid in stock. This is effectively no different from a construction company building an office building, or a bakery baking a cake.
As a more general commentary, I find this type of moral crusade very interesting, because it's very common in the rich western world, and it's always against the players but rarely against the system. I wish more people in the rich world would channel this discomfort as general disdain for the neoliberal free-market of which we're all victims, not just specifically AI, for example.
The problem isn't AI. The problem is a system where new technology means millions fearing poverty. Or one where profits, regardless of industry, matter more than sustainability. Or one where rich players can buy their way around the law— in this case copyright law for example. AI is just the latest in a series of products, companies, characters, etc. that will keep abusing an unfair system.
IMO over-focusing on small moral cursades against specific players like this and not the game as a whole is a distraction bound to always bring disappointment, and bound to keep moral players at a disadvantage constantly second-guessing themselves.
> This is effectively no different from a construction company building an office building, or a bakery baking a cake.
A construction company would still be justified to say no based on moral standards. A clearer example would be refusing to build a bridge if you know the blueprints/materials are bad, but you could also make a case for agreeing or not to build a detention center for immigrants. But the bakery example feels even more relevant, seeing as a bakery refusing to bake a cake base on the owner's religious beliefs ended up in the US Supreme Court [1].
I don't fault those who, when forced to choose between their morals and food, choose food. But I generally applaud those that stick to their beliefs at their own expense. Yes, the game is rigged and yes, the system is the problem. But sometimes all one can do is refuse to play.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
> As a more general commentary, I find this type of moral crusade very interesting, because it's very common in the rich western world, and it's always against the players but rarely against the system. I wish more people in the rich world would channel this discomfort as general disdain for the neoliberal free-market of which we're all victims, not just specifically AI, for example.
I totally agree. I still think opposing AI makes sense in the moment we're in, because it's the biggest, baddest example of the system you're describing. But the AI situation is a symptom of that system in that it's arisen because we already had overconsolidation and undue concentration of wealth. If our economy had been more egalitarian before AI, then even the same scientific/technological developments wouldn't be hitting us the same way now.
That said, I do get the sense from the article that the author is trying to do the right thing overall in this sense too, because they talk about being a small company and are marketing themselves based on good old-fashioned values like "we do a good job".
<< over-focusing on small moral cursades against specific players like this and not the game as a whole
Fucking this. What I tend to see is petty 'my guy good, not my guy bad' approach. All I want is even enforcement of existing rules on everyone. As it stands, to your point, only the least moral ship, because they don't even consider hesitating.
Collective bargaining helps a lot there. But that's not really a popular topic here, so the infighting continues.
I'm all down once we all to backed in a corner to refuse, though.
Well if they're going to go out of business otherwise...
nobody is against his moral stance. the problem is that he’s playing the “principled stand” game on a budget that cannot sustain it, then externalizing the cost like a victim. if you're a millionaire and can hold whatever moral line you want without ever worrying about rent, food, healthcare, kids, etc. then "selling out" is optional and bad. if you're joe schmoe with a mortgage and 5 months of emergency savings, and you refuse the main kind of work people want to pay you for (which is not even that controversial), you’re not some noble hero, you’re just blowing up your life.
> he’s playing the “principled stand” game on a budget that cannot sustain it, then externalizing the cost like a victim
No. It is the AI companies that are externalizing their costs onto everyone else by stealing the work of others, flooding the zone with garbage, and then weeping about how they'll never survive if there's any regulation or enforcement of copyright law.
The ceo of every one of those Ai companies drives an expensive car home to a mansion at the end of the workday. They are set. The average person does not and they cannot afford to play the principled stand game. Its not a question of right or wrong for most, its a question of putting food on the table
I'm not sure I understand this view. Did seamstresses see sewing machines as amoral? Or carpenters with electric and air drills and saws?
AI is another set of tooling. It can be used well or not, but arguing the morality of a tooling type (e.g drills) vs maybe a specific company (e.g Ryobi) seems an odd take to me.
Plagiarism is also "another set of tooling." Likewise slavery, and organized crime. Tools can be immoral.
Its cravenly amoral until your children are hungry. The market doesn't care about your morals. You either have a product people are willing to pay money for or you don't. If you are financially independent to the point it doesn't matter to you then by all means, do what you want. The vast majority of people are not.
I assume they are weathering the storm if they are posting like this and not saying "we're leaving the business". A proper business has a war chest for this exact situation (though I'm unsure of how long this businesses has operated)
> Saying "well you have to follow the market" is such a cravenly amoral perspective.
You only have to follow the market if you want to continue to stay relevant.
Taking a stand and refusing to follow the market is always an option, but it might mean going out of business for ideological reasons.
So practically speaking, the options are follow the market or find a different line of work if you don’t like the way the market is going.