Comment by skeledrew
13 hours ago
> not necessarily true
It's a possibility that is increased by their action. One leaves, a space is now open that will likely eventually be filled. And the chance of someone with equal/higher scruples filling it is very slim (unless you somehow know that the good amount of those who qualify and apply for the position have equal/higher scruples). That's just logic and math.
But organizations are made of humans. Jacob leaving might've moved some of his coworkers and his counterparts at OpenAI. And the same can be said for those who would fill positions at the frontier. Then finally there is a political component; his post went viral, 100K+ users appear to agree with it, and it is further fuel to the fire for regulation, which we already know most Americans want.
Others being moved to the point of also leaving would only worsen the effect. A viral post too can worsen the effect as it's now even less likely that someone with scruples who qualifies for the position(s) will apply. And those in it primarily for the money - and couldn't care less about the morals - will happily send in their CVs after becoming aware of the post.
I'm utterly unconvinced. Others who are moved don't have to leave to effect change. And there's a very small pool of people on the planet who are at least as qualified as Jacob to work on pretraining at Anthropic. And when they'll join they'll have to ramp up. And you haven't addressed any of the positive effects of virality.
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You missed the point.
> Just because someone else might be willing to do it isn't a reason to continue doing it.
Hence, someone filling the position after you leave isn't a reason to continue doing it, whereas the fact that it's an immoral thing to do is a reason to stop doing it.
Someone filling the position after you leave has no bearing on the reasons that are relevant to what you ought to do here. It's like deciding to not buy a ticket to see a movie because someone else is going to buy the ticket anyways even if you don't purchase the ticket. It has no relevance to whether you should watch the movie or not, just as someone else taking the job has no relevance to whether you ought to do the job.
> the fact that it's an immoral thing to do
This is carrying a lot of weight. What makes working on frontier models "immoral"? Because there is potential for misuse? Would you also say working at a knife factory is immoral? Or even at a nuclear or biological pathogens research lab? After all those too can be misused.
And if one does suspect a workplace is moving in a bad direction, and there's no immediate danger to them, is leaving and then talking about it really the responsible move? Like if you're on your way to meet friends late one evening and you see a small child alone and crying in an alleyway and a bunch of sleazy-looking guys hanging around, do you continue on to your meeting where you then tell your friends about the crying child you passed in an alley and what those guys may or may not do to the child?
Right, I assume tomorrow you'll be applying for the next Nazi camp guard vacancy? After all, if you don't do it, someone with less scruples likely will.
Today we see the Nazis as bad. Do you think they saw themselves as such? They had an ideal, and they worked towards it. And I'd say they're were many who didn't care about that ideal and just wanted a job. You can't compare the morals of today with yesterday, or judge the ideals of a person or group without relevant context.
The best way to get corporate America to listen is making RoI suffer. If you are the most qualified, everyone other than you is less qualified for the job, and likely to bring in more waste. It's the only language this stupid damn country understands. Just the loss of tribal knowledge, shifting of workload, and morale hits are likely to be far more devastating than anyone here probably wants to admit, because most here completely dismiss the role of irrational modes of thought in psychological self-regulation.
Disgust is a tremendously powerful thing.