Hacker News Reader

Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

If the company had any sort of ethics at all, they would release a patch that let you point it another LLM so you could at least keep it running. Or release their software as open source.

Or just do something so that they don't just "die".

Another example on the long list of "there should be a law that you have to open source your server if you're shutting down a server based service".

View on HN

The last time the issue of "abrupt" startup shutdowns messing up people's lives was debated on HN, the was a contingent that insisted that the founders and leadership have a fiduciary duty to share holders to hold out for a miracle. If they release a firmware that unlocks the robots, they are immediately setting their startups worth to about $0, when they could be bought out at the last minute for a couple of millions. Or so the story goes, I think it's immoral. When your left with <1 mo of runway, the best thing for your employees and consumers would be an orderly exit. VCs may not like that though, so it tends not to happen.

> fiduciary duty

Personally, I love the phrase fiduciary duty. I use it all the time to help rationalize the choices I make, to ensure I maintain my fiduciary duty to myself, and use it liberally to convince my friends it's ok fight for raises, or the new job they want. I think I like it also, because of the context it has to live within my brain. A long time ago, when I was a young teenager, I was arguing, with a named partner for a huge lawfirm (family friends) about if a large company had to cede identifying information about users to $government. I made that same argument, they have a duty to shareholders. His retort was a simple. "No, this is a human rights issue, you can just say 'we're not playing'". That was a quick end to that conversation, because of how insane it is to suggest giving up human rights for money.

Fiduciary responsibility is nice and all, but have you tried upholding your responsibility to protecting human rights too? Sure, yes startup founders have a responsibility to hope for a miracle "for the shareholders!" but they have a much higher priority to human rights.

> That was a quick end to that conversation, because of how insane it is to suggest giving up human rights for money.

It is insane when you write it out kike that, but this is further complicated by money providing extrinsic motivation, and caring about human rights being intrinsic, at least with our current economic system and jurisprudence with laissez-faire approach to human rights violations (see wage theft for a direct example of the insanity). C-suites are more worried about shareholder lawsuits than they are about those from either consumer or employees.

My suspicion is that there's active filtering that prevents those who "overly" care about human rights from climbing too high up the leadership ladder at for-profit organizations.

> they would release a patch that let you point it another LLM

What a great idea. Let parents hook it up to Gemini, who told users to eat glue and rocks. I’m sure wrong and harmful information won’t have any effect on autistic children, no siree, can’t see a single problem with that.

And before anyone has the followup brilliant idea of then putting the blame on parents for whatever LLM they choose, let me remind you that even on HN (ostensibly with a tech savvy crowd) a ton of people furiously defend LLMs. Non-tech users aren’t as equipped to make these choices.

if they owe debt, they may not be legally able to open source their software, since it could still theoretically be sold to someone to pay off debts. is there an expert in bankruptcy law that knows for sure?

What’s special about server-based services vs other services? Should they also be obligated to publish their IP if they cease operations?

The larger issue is that they sold a product which was designed for children to form emotional attachments to, but the product was never designed to be long lasting.

If they were ethical, they would’ve ensured that moxie would work at least somewhat offline.

Nintendo has been doing this for years. Their games are always almost entirely playable offline (outside of timed events.)

That’s why you can “time travel” in animal crossing and Pokémon.

It doesn’t even phone home to check the time even if it affects gameplay.

What are you on about, last I checked Nintendo makes a huge number of games unavailable and is extremely litigious against the emulation community. IIRC you can't even transfer savefiles to a different device in some cases.

Both can be true that Nintendo does well at sunsetting services to ensure they work as well as they can for as long as possible while still being complete jerks about making sure you can only play that game in that specific way and if you want to play it any other they try to force you to buy the same game over and over.

If you have a Nintendo game on a Nintendo console, that game will continue to work on that console as long as it still physically functions.

If Nintendo goes bankrupt, my game boy, 3DS, GameCube, Nintendo 64, and switch will all still work pretty much as if nothing has changed.

Unlike moxie or that Spotify car thing.

You’re describing a different issue entirely around games preservation outside of official Nintendo channels (emulators and roms)

Nintendo could do away with emulation all together by requiring games to always ping Nintendo servers in startup, or they won’t run.

They could include any number of DRM strategies to prevent emulation at the cost of longevity of their software and hardware.

They don’t, though. They opt for litigation over really strong DRM.

Server based services are different because they are required for me to keep using the thing I purchased. If my hardware requires an internet service to keep functioning, then they should have to make that service available for self hosting or for someone else to host it if they go out of business.

There should never be a case where something physical that I bought stops working because of an internet based service.

Is there a kid safe LLM available?

I can imagine this going horribly wrong fast.

Companies only ever have ethics when forced.

100% this, we need right to repair, we need EoL mandates, we need to restrict IP protections, especially in time.

Does it count as being ethical if you have no choice?

Force means the society has ethics, rather than the company.

There's zero (0) motivation. They have their $800 / child. It implies there's someone who actually cares about children, or who can even possibly comprehend sympathy in charge of the company.

Rather than: "AI is hot. Parents with children spend money on toys. Selling children AI toys will make money. Profit."

Notably, does not look like that many people were actually swindled. Only 5000 downloads for the App companion on Google Play, and 27 reviews, and many are scathing. [1]

> Like a Jipsy moxie will keep taking your money And lie to to convince you to keep paying for it. It's $100 a month and cost $1,000 to buy.

> Do not buy this product. Technical support is non existent. I opted to return the robot. They acknowledged return. 3 weeks later still no refund for this $1K robot. Only after I created a PayPal dispute did PayPal refund me. Still not a single reply from the company to any of my emails.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.embo.embod...

it's impossible to do it safely. open source model for kids!? without moderation every 'hacker' would like to get access. imho, the only option is to sell support as a business to someone else. with payed subscription it could survive for some time. but obviously not for long without new robots ans subscriptions. more interesting would be to have this sort of chatgpt for kids. with some basic robot control like flashing lights. then it would be possible to have several small and big manufacturers making mechanical robots and contributing to common software development.

another proof for 'robotics is hard'...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com