People have objected to training their replacements since forever. Younger people, foreigners, now machines. What else is new?
I don't think you are under any moral or ethical obligation to train your replacement. But I don't think the decision makes much of a difference one way or another in the grand scheme of things.
> You may ask: Why would anyone agree to train an AI model in the very skills they took years to acquire?
If they could actually do it, I would be all over it! If you can save humanity from having to spend years acquiring these skills and judgements, they can do something else with their lives.
Just like how the car gave us back so many more hours to spend actually living instead of working. And the washing machine. And the computer. And the Internet.
While our time working at home has definitely gone down, our time at work hasn’t though. The point is our employers just expect more, and the benefits of whatever new efficiency is gained, if any, are not passed onto those at the bottom or middle.
The argument against "they can do something else with their lives" is not a strawman though.
In a hypothetical end state where the people who own fully-automated production of everything, and need maybe few millions employed to support and guard that production, the "freed" people are not going to do something better with their lives.
I don't want to attack your good faith in humanity, so I will ask another way - if a system was reliant on workers, what reason would there be for those workers to exist , after their work became automated?
You may however notice that your existence might be cut short if you don't have access to food, shelter, medical treatments, because "the system" eventually has no incentive to provide for you anymore, because your labor is now worthless to capital.
Presumably the stress one endures when their way of life is challenged significantly is life changing. Not that you’d care though, by the sounds of it.
well i brought up the system for a reason, human existence is relative to the system in which humans exist. are there any examples of humans being systematically supported when their class of labor ceased to exist on a widespread scale? if so, did those supportive aspects spontaneously manifest? all in all, would such insights apply to a more widespread scenario, where the affected labor classes are all those involving human computer interaction?
You do cease to exist once you don't get access to food, water or health care long enough.
Think just a little past the most direct consequence - let me rephrase GP's question: What reason would the ownership class have to provide these necessities to workers when they no longer require their work?
> If you can save humanity from having to spend years acquiring these skills and judgements, they can do something else with their lives.
In theory, yes. In practice, no. Not until we replace our entire socioeconomic system. As-is, the only reason most people can extract an existence from capital is capital's dependence on labor.
Break that dependence and the entire thing breaks, capital becomes a self-sustaining flywheel towards feudalism and everyone who currently depends on labor for their survival loses the foundation of their existence.
Only once we fundamentally change ownership structures can we work towards your vision. Until then, it is a false piper to dystopia.
Unfortunately, the mass of people, in general, have very little self determination or descretion. People go with trends and crowds. That's a low resistance path, which does not require you to support your decisions. The trend will support your decisions.
So, the phenomenon will continue. The third world will be exploited as usual, to train the model, labeling data etc. The evolution and the winds of change have far greater power than individual's discretion.
> Now the only difference is that they replace you with a machine instead of a human.
That’s the relevant part, a training for a machine will be replicated infinitely at no cost. The scale is what matters here, that changes the whole dynamic. Instead of one worker training the one person who will replace them, you’re giving the AI companies a perfect record they will use for as long as they need it, for as many machines as they need it
I think that the main difference right now, and I think it matters, is that the concentration of power and wealth is very high today and this is going to be a real detriment to our society.
It's nice, but it won't change anything, there will be always someone willing to do it. It's not exactly trolley problem, where maybe significant majority could agree on not training AI.
> Traditionally, this decision was made by humans, but now AI has taken over, and decides who gets hired
Btw. this would be illegal in EU, you have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing.
I dissent from the comments currently here, and give the author kudos for doing what's right even to his detriment, which is much more than can be said for anyone taking a corporate job
correct, I proceed to give this human more kudos for doing the right thing to his own detriment when he doesn't even think it's right, which is not only a leap but now also a bound above knowingly doing the wrong thing for profit
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think it's an effective orientation to a future world where the AI will be trained anyway.
Also, I don't think a PHD of Industrial Sociology is really a job anyone needs to have done, so it's unlikely anyone will bother training an AI to do it. That doesn't mean I think studying Industrial Sociology is worthless, I just think it's unlikely anyone will fund training an AI to do it. Besides, is that even how AI's are trained? By some professor somewhere teaching them how to do his/her job before being replaced? That's like how it worked in Player Piano by Vonnegut, but it's not how they actually work.
Here's a very strong take on the situation, more for discussion than a true representation of my own beliefs:
The ML models will be trained as long as we as the human society in charge allow them to be trained. Progress only happens if society allows it to happen. The commercial AI proponents are trying to do an end-run around societal adjustments, forcing change at a speed that is to fast for proper responses. It could be interpreted as a malicious attack. We, the people, could collectively decide to slow them down or to make them stop. Their hope is to confront us with a done deal before any opposition has found the resolve and organization to do anything meaningful about it.
We, collectively, need to decide where to draw the lines on this technology and we need to decide fast.
EU and US are slowing down while China doesn't slow down. In fact, they are pushing harder after gathering so much info from workers, and facial recognitions set in place for half a decade.
I don't think society has enough power to control what billionaires spend their money on. The promise of AI is such an attractive nuisance for power seekers that trying to crack down on it will just force it underground, where it will be developed with even less care and oversight than it is now.
Our institutions aren't even able to control what dirt-poor pirates do on hardware they own. How in the heck are they going to be able to control what incomprehensibly-rich people do? They can purchase political favors from whichever nations are selling them.
> trying to crack down on it will just force it underground, where it will be developed with even less care and oversight than it is now.
With way less access to infrastructure, hardware, capital, people. That’s literally what we need, it should be constrained by having way less resources
Advancing the state of the art takes so many resources that it can't happen underground, at least for now. Slap enough controls on the means and the handbrakes are on. So your doomsday scenario could be preventable. The crux is that enough people need to come out in favor to put constraints in place. It's not impossible, but public opinions form slowly.
Society could take control back. It's not impossible. History has examples where people took control away from small collectives, although it wasn't always strictly lawfuly or even peaceful.
To take it to the extreme, billions of virtual dollars wouldn't offer any protection against a determined lynch mob at the front door.
More realistically, there is a lot of power in showing up in big numbers and protesting. It is beyond me why especially US culture doesn't accept that as an option these days.
> We, collectively, need to decide where to draw the lines on this technology and we need to decide fast.
I hope you, collectively, don't start deciding what deodorants I can wear. (Like Bernie Sanders infamously brought up.) Or what toys my daughter can play with. (As Donald Trump wanted.)
I wear deodorant to get along with the humans around me. Concrete folks I can point to (even if I don't necessarily know the guy next to me on the train by name nor will see him again).
No nebulous society involved that makes collective decisions in the abstract.
You got it backwards. Society is simple the collective that forms transitively from you, your connections, theirs and so on. You are pointing at a tree and missing that it's standing in the forest.
I believe the people currently at the frontier for ai training as either one of 2 types. First who are genuine freaks of nature and have an obsession to see the epitome of this technology, the other is people who have genuine malicious intent and probably hope that the ai replaces human. The former usually don't mean to do this, but in their obsession it results in the outcome of ai replace skills workers
People have objected to training their replacements since forever. Younger people, foreigners, now machines. What else is new?
I don't think you are under any moral or ethical obligation to train your replacement. But I don't think the decision makes much of a difference one way or another in the grand scheme of things.
> You may ask: Why would anyone agree to train an AI model in the very skills they took years to acquire?
If they could actually do it, I would be all over it! If you can save humanity from having to spend years acquiring these skills and judgements, they can do something else with their lives.
Just like how the car gave us back so many more hours to spend actually living instead of working. And the washing machine. And the computer. And the Internet.
All of these things have been marvelous. The washing machine in particular is such a marvel that almost all Amish use one.
While our time working at home has definitely gone down, our time at work hasn’t though. The point is our employers just expect more, and the benefits of whatever new efficiency is gained, if any, are not passed onto those at the bottom or middle.
The washing machine and dishwasher definitely did.
I don't own a car, so I can't comment on that.
They release women from housekeeping... to workplaces.
>actually living...
Watching TV...Or consuming social media..
> they can do something else with their lives.
Let them eat cake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake
That phrase was born as a straw man.
The argument against "they can do something else with their lives" is not a strawman though.
In a hypothetical end state where the people who own fully-automated production of everything, and need maybe few millions employed to support and guard that production, the "freed" people are not going to do something better with their lives.
I don't want to attack your good faith in humanity, so I will ask another way - if a system was reliant on workers, what reason would there be for those workers to exist , after their work became automated?
Workers are humans. Humans don't need any system's permission or reasoning to exist.
If you've ever been laid off or fired, you might have noticed that you don't cease to exist when your contract ends.
You may however notice that your existence might be cut short if you don't have access to food, shelter, medical treatments, because "the system" eventually has no incentive to provide for you anymore, because your labor is now worthless to capital.
Presumably the stress one endures when their way of life is challenged significantly is life changing. Not that you’d care though, by the sounds of it.
well i brought up the system for a reason, human existence is relative to the system in which humans exist. are there any examples of humans being systematically supported when their class of labor ceased to exist on a widespread scale? if so, did those supportive aspects spontaneously manifest? all in all, would such insights apply to a more widespread scenario, where the affected labor classes are all those involving human computer interaction?
You do cease to exist once you don't get access to food, water or health care long enough.
Think just a little past the most direct consequence - let me rephrase GP's question: What reason would the ownership class have to provide these necessities to workers when they no longer require their work?
> If you can save humanity from having to spend years acquiring these skills and judgements, they can do something else with their lives.
In theory, yes. In practice, no. Not until we replace our entire socioeconomic system. As-is, the only reason most people can extract an existence from capital is capital's dependence on labor.
Break that dependence and the entire thing breaks, capital becomes a self-sustaining flywheel towards feudalism and everyone who currently depends on labor for their survival loses the foundation of their existence.
Only once we fundamentally change ownership structures can we work towards your vision. Until then, it is a false piper to dystopia.
Unfortunately, the mass of people, in general, have very little self determination or descretion. People go with trends and crowds. That's a low resistance path, which does not require you to support your decisions. The trend will support your decisions.
So, the phenomenon will continue. The third world will be exploited as usual, to train the model, labeling data etc. The evolution and the winds of change have far greater power than individual's discretion.
Even if you think you don't have enough impact, reflecting on these issues is better than blindly jumping into the trend.
Reminds me a bit of https://www.amazon.com/Job-Went-India-Pragmatic-Programmers/... tbh (look when that came out), not nearly the same scale but similar questions...
If it is that or starve, the I would probably have taken the job. But yeah, if there where alternatives, no thanks.
Yes, this is basically the inverse of:
"Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime."
Hasn’t that always been the case? Companies have replaced their labour with cheaper alternatives from the other part of the world for decades.
Now the only difference is that they replace you with a machine instead of a human.
> Now the only difference is that they replace you with a machine instead of a human.
That’s the relevant part, a training for a machine will be replicated infinitely at no cost. The scale is what matters here, that changes the whole dynamic. Instead of one worker training the one person who will replace them, you’re giving the AI companies a perfect record they will use for as long as they need it, for as many machines as they need it
I think that the main difference right now, and I think it matters, is that the concentration of power and wealth is very high today and this is going to be a real detriment to our society.
It's nice, but it won't change anything, there will be always someone willing to do it. It's not exactly trolley problem, where maybe significant majority could agree on not training AI.
> Traditionally, this decision was made by humans, but now AI has taken over, and decides who gets hired
Btw. this would be illegal in EU, you have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing.
Thank God for the EU and its regulations. The people decrying them are the ones it's stopping from building dystopia.
I dissent from the comments currently here, and give the author kudos for doing what's right even to his detriment, which is much more than can be said for anyone taking a corporate job
> I wish I could tell you my choice was based on principle
> I still do not know why I walked away from the AI training job.
The author didn't make a choice on principle.
But they wrote the article on principle, and that has a greater impact.
The author tells a journey towards establishing principles.
correct, I proceed to give this human more kudos for doing the right thing to his own detriment when he doesn't even think it's right, which is not only a leap but now also a bound above knowingly doing the wrong thing for profit
I appreciate the sentiment, but I don't think it's an effective orientation to a future world where the AI will be trained anyway.
Also, I don't think a PHD of Industrial Sociology is really a job anyone needs to have done, so it's unlikely anyone will bother training an AI to do it. That doesn't mean I think studying Industrial Sociology is worthless, I just think it's unlikely anyone will fund training an AI to do it. Besides, is that even how AI's are trained? By some professor somewhere teaching them how to do his/her job before being replaced? That's like how it worked in Player Piano by Vonnegut, but it's not how they actually work.
Here's a very strong take on the situation, more for discussion than a true representation of my own beliefs:
The ML models will be trained as long as we as the human society in charge allow them to be trained. Progress only happens if society allows it to happen. The commercial AI proponents are trying to do an end-run around societal adjustments, forcing change at a speed that is to fast for proper responses. It could be interpreted as a malicious attack. We, the people, could collectively decide to slow them down or to make them stop. Their hope is to confront us with a done deal before any opposition has found the resolve and organization to do anything meaningful about it.
We, collectively, need to decide where to draw the lines on this technology and we need to decide fast.
Pretty naive take.
EU and US are slowing down while China doesn't slow down. In fact, they are pushing harder after gathering so much info from workers, and facial recognitions set in place for half a decade.
No signs of the US or EU slowing down
I don't think society has enough power to control what billionaires spend their money on. The promise of AI is such an attractive nuisance for power seekers that trying to crack down on it will just force it underground, where it will be developed with even less care and oversight than it is now.
Our institutions aren't even able to control what dirt-poor pirates do on hardware they own. How in the heck are they going to be able to control what incomprehensibly-rich people do? They can purchase political favors from whichever nations are selling them.
> trying to crack down on it will just force it underground, where it will be developed with even less care and oversight than it is now.
With way less access to infrastructure, hardware, capital, people. That’s literally what we need, it should be constrained by having way less resources
Advancing the state of the art takes so many resources that it can't happen underground, at least for now. Slap enough controls on the means and the handbrakes are on. So your doomsday scenario could be preventable. The crux is that enough people need to come out in favor to put constraints in place. It's not impossible, but public opinions form slowly.
Is society in charge of them? Or is it a small collective of people?
Edit: Typo
Society could take control back. It's not impossible. History has examples where people took control away from small collectives, although it wasn't always strictly lawfuly or even peaceful.
To take it to the extreme, billions of virtual dollars wouldn't offer any protection against a determined lynch mob at the front door.
More realistically, there is a lot of power in showing up in big numbers and protesting. It is beyond me why especially US culture doesn't accept that as an option these days.
> We, collectively, need to decide where to draw the lines on this technology and we need to decide fast.
I hope you, collectively, don't start deciding what deodorants I can wear. (Like Bernie Sanders infamously brought up.) Or what toys my daughter can play with. (As Donald Trump wanted.)
Society abides by a lot of rules that you also learned to follow, mostly while you were raised. Why else would you even wear a deodorant?
I wear deodorant to get along with the humans around me. Concrete folks I can point to (even if I don't necessarily know the guy next to me on the train by name nor will see him again).
No nebulous society involved that makes collective decisions in the abstract.
You got it backwards. Society is simple the collective that forms transitively from you, your connections, theirs and so on. You are pointing at a tree and missing that it's standing in the forest.
Based on https://annas-archive.pk/blog/physical-destruction.html I wouldn't assume being in a niche is enough.
Could you please elaborate?
I believe the people currently at the frontier for ai training as either one of 2 types. First who are genuine freaks of nature and have an obsession to see the epitome of this technology, the other is people who have genuine malicious intent and probably hope that the ai replaces human. The former usually don't mean to do this, but in their obsession it results in the outcome of ai replace skills workers