Comment by seneca
7 days ago
Famine in the modern world is almost entirely caused by dysfunctional governments and/or armed conflicts. Engineers have basically nothing to do with either of those.
This sort of "there are bad things in the world, therefore focusing on anything else is bad" thinking is generally misguided.
Famine is mostly political but engineers (not all of them) definitely have to do with it. If you’re building powerful AI for corporations that are then involved with the political entities that caused the famine, then you can’t claim to basically have nothing to do with it.
I totally disagree. "If A is associated with B, and B is associated with C, and C causes D, then A is responsible for D" is tortured logic.
You can disagree all you want but the exact wording used in original comment that I responded to was
> Engineers have basically nothing to do with either of those.
The logic here is “If A is actively working to develop capabilities for B, which B offers up to C who then uses it to do D, then A cannot claim to have nothing to do with D.”