[GoToRO]

hard disagree. No matter what gets built, it will be used for bad things if the society is not properly constructed. We need to fix our government and then you can build anything you want. I don't like putting the blame on the builders, building is already difficult as it is. Also you can't built something in isolation, word will get out anyway. That's why this speech is either naive or he just wanted to tick a todo list: say something about AI.

[jamesinmn]

> I don’t like putting blame on the builders

Why does it have to be either/or?

From a high-level view, there are powerful cultural/political forces that nudge us towards building harmful, wasteful things without us being aware of said forces. The government, corporate greed, and billion-dollar marketing budgets are to blame.

But on the ground, from an in-the-trenches perspective, I think an engineer at Meta, for example, shares in some level of blame, too. Mainly because there is plenty of evidence showing how much harm Meta products have brought upon society. Yet Meta couldn’t be built without engineers opting in to work there in exchange for $300k salaries.

We desperately need moral clarity and courage at both the policy-level and the individual level.

[Levitz]

It is simply not feasible.

It's not either/or in strict terms, it absolutely is either/or in practical terms. When the conscientious engineer chooses not to take the 300k job, the next one in line does. If enough choose not to, it just became a 400k job.

Can you change society in such a way that nobody would take such jobs? In strict terms, sure, in practical terms it probably entails enormous costs, both economical and societal. And then you still have other countries.

There's an entire legal code filled with things on which we can't rely on the morals of the people. We can't stop theft, rape and murder, what makes you think that stopping engineers is any more feasible?

The best thing builders can do is use their knowledge and authority to pressure the other side.

[bluesign]

Because there will always be bad actors. You cannot design a system on all actors' full cooperation.

Ofc they share the blame, but it is not solving the problem.

You can say for example: loan sharks are bad for society; so government gives anyone 0 percent credit. You just removed one problem, created another.

Just and sustaining system with individual morality is destined to fail. Only option is social regulation. Which is at government level.

[xandrius]

I get where you are coming from but this is the common "reduction to politics" that anyone who doesn't want to address a problem uses: think of any societal or human problem and you can have your comment with different nouns.

Sure, IF we could just go and fix our governments in some magical way then the problem would disappear. That goes from hunger, climate change, videogame addiction and AI. The problem is that what you value in life in different than what others do, so we now have a system in which sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don't.

But back to the topic, I do think that how OpenAI and Anthropic handled the government and them asking to drop guardrails is something a company can actually and actively do without having to reinvent the universe.

[bluefirebrand]

> I don't like putting the blame on the builders

Like it or not if you knowingly build stuff that is used for evil purposes you are complicit

You can't build an orphan mulching machine and get away with just a shrug. "I don't really agree with mulching orphans but someone else paid me to build that. If I didn't build it someone else would have" just does not absolve you of your involvement in mulching orphans

[GoToRO]

In reality things are much more mundane. You build a custom blog framework, it can be used for good or bad. You build a better app framework, it can be used for good or bad. There's nothing you can build that will not be used by bad people. Canned food and radar came from war. Depending on which side you were, it was used to do good or to do bad. Technology is just that, technology. People are still under the marketing spell of US companies that invited engineers to "change the world". People assumed in a good way. In reality you just change the world, as the other people see fit.

[bluefirebrand]

All I'm saying is you don't get a pass if you helped design a missile guidance system that your government winds up using to bomb children

Or if you're involved in building out mass surveillance that male policemen use to stalk their exes

Yeah, technology is just technology but most of us aren't just working on pure tech for techs sake. We're working on products that have a purpose.

[jjk166]

> We need to fix our government and then you can build anything you want.

Are we all going to stop building things until the government is fixed and all political problems are resolved? No? Then we must think about how we should build in a world with imperfect government.

[peanut-walrus]

It's a feedback loop between governance, social structures and individuals. But out of those, only individuals are the ones with free will who are able to "break" the loop and direct society along a different path. It's not just building "big things" that changes us, it's every small individual decision about what you choose to spend your labor on. No revolution would succeed without people willing to rebel and no dictator could dictate without people willing to follow them.

[jobu1342]

Hard disagree to your disagree. Every organization is made up of people and reflects the character of its members. So with the nation itself. If people won't take responsibility for their own actions, neither will the government. I.e. self-government isn't the answer to fixing a broken people. Transformation begins within one's self, not in imposing one's will on another. First everyone much look to themselves, then the government, organizations, and projects will fix itself.

Everyone likes to talk about "fixing the government". It feels nice to understand the problem with something else that is broken. The problem is that replacing the people in charge is a no-op if you don't have a pool of good people to choose from and the will to choose them.

[Npovview]

"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." - P.C. Hodgell, from her novel Seeker's Mask (1994)

"That which can be automated by the AI should be."

[moron4hire]

When he speaks of the builders needing to take responsibility, I think he is directing his comments at tech company leadership. The Sam Altmans of the world, not the poor slobs like us who need a job for health insurance because apparently unemployed people don't deserve to live.

[salawat]

No, he's talking to you too. The Sam Altman's can't be a threat without useful idiots to cooperate with and doing work for them. You don't get out of your own culpability because you locked on a set of golden handcuffs.

[jimbokun]

Oh, just “fix government”?

Glad there’s a simple, easy to implement solution to solve this problem! One that hasn’t been considered or tried before!

[pheaded_while9]

Consciousness is the causal factor, not government. You are putting the cart before the horse to insist on any political solution.

[hideout_berlin]

why not government

[dogcomplex]

True. World governments committing genocide and building concentration camps yet it's the computer scientist who's supposed to worry about ethics here because they're the ones who are merely the first to inevitably mix two paper's methodologies together?

All of this is empty puffery til the US and Israel are condemned. Go after the Big Tech billionaires backing those monsters, sure, but no builder needs to be more concerned about ethics than the very institutions designed to concentrate human decision making. Fix your own house first, folks. Techies - keep building, and do better than these people.