[aakresearch]

If the life of everyone (all 8 billion people) is improved by tech by some margin (pick the margin - 10%, 1%, 0.1%) at the cost of x people (pick the x - a thousand, a million, a billion) being killed by the same tech - is it still positive or negative? How do you even reason about it?

[fragmede]

Fortunately, I'm not actually in charge of anything. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. There are some real life trolly problems out there that I'm glad I don't have to answer.

https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/

But yeah if you want to put it in a spreadsheet, what numbers do you want for it to work out? Because I'm using a smartphone to access the Internet and post here, which means I have no idea how much human misery went into my being able to do that. Someone has died to make my totally average smartphone came to be in my hands. LLMs are nothing new under capitalism.

[aakresearch]

I think we are in full agreement. Likewise, I am not in charge of any practical matter, and glad I don't have to answer to any moral or physical dilemma.

The link is fun :). My kill count was 75.

I was hinting at full impossibility to quantify those problems. Starting with un-define-ability (sorry, English is not my native tongue) of the very term "need" upon which the predicate "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few". Maybe that is why I am leaning towards "deontological" resolution of trolley problems, rather than "utilitarian".

As for LLMs, I use them and benefit from them. For fun, and hopefully for profit too. But if I had a lever I could pull to make this tech disappear - I would not hesitate one second, deontology be damned. Even better if smartphones suddenly follow too.