In contrast to others, I just want to say that I applaud the decision to take a moral stance against AI, and I wish more people would do that. Saying "well you have to follow the market" is such a cravenly amoral perspective.
You only have to follow the market if you want to continue to stay relevant.
Taking a stand and refusing to follow the market is always an option, but it might mean going out of business for ideological reasons.
So practically speaking, the options are follow the market or find a different line of work if you don’t like the way the market is going.
The ideal version of my job would be partnering with all the local businesses around me that I know and love, elevating their online facilities to let all of us thrive. But the money simply isn’t there. Instead their profits and my happiness are funnelled through corporate behemoths. I’ll applaud anyone who is willing to step outside of that.
Of course. If you want the world to go back to how it was before, you’re going to be very depressed in any business.
That’s why I said your only real options are going with the market or finding a different line of work. Technically there’s a third option where you stay put and watch bank accounts decline until you’re forced to choose one of the first two options, but it’s never as satisfying in retrospect as you imagined that small act of protest would have been.
Even in the linked post the author isn't complaining that it's not fair or whatever, they're simply stating that they are losing money as a result of their moral choice. I don't think they're deluded about the cause and effect.
Isn't that what money is though, a way to get people to stop what they're doing and do what you want them to instead? It's how Rome bent its conquests to its will and we've been doing it ever since.
It's a deeply broken system but I think that acknowledging it as such is the first step towards replacing it with something less broken.
It doesn't have to be. Plenty of people are fulfilled by their jobs and make good money doing them.
We've always tolerated a certain portion of society who finds the situation unacceptable, but don't you suspect that things will change if that portion is most of us?
Maybe we're not there yet, idk, but the article is about the unease vs the data, and I think the unease comes from the awareness that that's where we're headed.
If you're only raised in a grifter's society, sure. Money is to be conquered and extracted.
But we came definetly shift back to a society where money is one to help keep the boat afloat for everyone to pursue their own interests, and not a losing game of Monopoly where the rich get richer.
Past that, simply look at the small actions on your life. These build and define your overall character. It's hard to vote for collective bargaining of you have trouble complimenting your family at the table. You need to appreciate and feel a part of a community to really come together.
This all sounds like mumbo jumbo on the outside, but just take some time to reflect a bit. People don't wake up one day and simply think "you know, this really is all the immigrant's fault". That's a result of months or year of mindset.
taking a moral stance isn't inherently ideological
It's not "swim with the tide or die", it's "float like a corpse down the river, or swim". Which direction you swim in will certainly be a different level of effort, and you can end up as a corpse no matter what, but that doesn't mean the only option you have is to give up.
> So practically speaking, the options are follow the market or find a different line of work if you don’t like the way the market is going.
You're correct in this, but I think it's worth making the explicit statement that that's also true because we live in a system of amoral resource allocation.
Yes, this is a forum centered on startups, so there's a certain economic bias at play, but on the subject of morality I think there's a fair case to be made that it's reasonable to want to oppose an inherently unjust system and to be frustrated that doing so makes survival difficult.
We shouldn't have to choose between principles and food on the table.
I am increasingly convinced that these are the only true kind of ethical decision. Painless/straightforward ethical decisions that you make every day - they probably don't even register on your radar. But a tough tradeoff does.
You can also just outlive the irrationality. If we could stop beating around the bush and admit we're in a recession, that would explain a lot of things. You just gotta bear the storm.
It's way too late to jump on the AI train anyway. Maybe one more year, but I'd be surprised if that bubble doesn't pop by the end of 2027.
If you found it unacceptable to work with companies that used any kind of digital database (because you found centralization of information and the amount of processing and analytics this enables unbecoming) then you should probably look for another venture instead of finding companies that commit to pen and paper.
Maybe they will, and I bet they'll be content doing that. I personally don't work with AI and try my best to not to train it. I left GitHub & Reddit because of this, and not uploading new photos to Instagram. The jury is still out on how I'm gonna share my photography, and not sharing it is on the table, as well.
I may even move to a cathedral model or just stop sharing the software I write with the general world, too.
Nobody has to bend and act against their values and conscience just because others are doing it, and the system is demanding to betray ourselves for its own benefit.
Life is more nuanced than that.
(But only all of us simultaneously, otherwise won't count! ;))))
The number of triggered Stockholm Syndrome patients in this comment section is terminally nauseating.
Not that innovative, but hey. If it let's someone pretend it is and fixes the problem, I'm all for it.
Now, I'll probably install a gallery webapp to my webserver and put it behind authentication. I'm not rushing because I don't crave any interaction from my photography. The images will most probably be optimized and resized to save some storage space, as well.
The people pushing AI aren't listening to the true demand for AI. This, its not making ita money back. That's why this market is broken and not prone to last.
Maybe ot will. I'm still waiting for the utility. Right now it's just a big hype bubble, so wake me when it pops.
Following the market is also not cravenly amoral, AI or not.
What stance against AI? Image generation is not the same as code generation.
There are so many open source projects out there, its a huge difference than taking all the images.
AI is also just ML so should i not use image bounding box algorithm? Am i not allowed to take training data online or are only big companies not allowed to?
A studio taking on temporary projects isn't investing into AI— they're not getting paid in stock. This is effectively no different from a construction company building an office building, or a bakery baking a cake.
As a more general commentary, I find this type of moral crusade very interesting, because it's very common in the rich western world, and it's always against the players but rarely against the system. I wish more people in the rich world would channel this discomfort as general disdain for the neoliberal free-market of which we're all victims, not just specifically AI, for example.
The problem isn't AI. The problem is a system where new technology means millions fearing poverty. Or one where profits, regardless of industry, matter more than sustainability. Or one where rich players can buy their way around the law— in this case copyright law for example. AI is just the latest in a series of products, companies, characters, etc. that will keep abusing an unfair system.
IMO over-focusing on small moral cursades against specific players like this and not the game as a whole is a distraction bound to always bring disappointment, and bound to keep moral players at a disadvantage constantly second-guessing themselves.
Fucking this. What I tend to see is petty 'my guy good, not my guy bad' approach. All I want is even enforcement of existing rules on everyone. As it stands, to your point, only the least moral ship, because they don't even consider hesitating.
I'm all down once we all to backed in a corner to refuse, though.
A construction company would still be justified to say no based on moral standards. A clearer example would be refusing to build a bridge if you know the blueprints/materials are bad, but you could also make a case for agreeing or not to build a detention center for immigrants. But the bakery example feels even more relevant, seeing as a bakery refusing to bake a cake base on the owner's religious beliefs ended up in the US Supreme Court [1].
I don't fault those who, when forced to choose between their morals and food, choose food. But I generally applaud those that stick to their beliefs at their own expense. Yes, the game is rigged and yes, the system is the problem. But sometimes all one can do is refuse to play.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
I totally agree. I still think opposing AI makes sense in the moment we're in, because it's the biggest, baddest example of the system you're describing. But the AI situation is a symptom of that system in that it's arisen because we already had overconsolidation and undue concentration of wealth. If our economy had been more egalitarian before AI, then even the same scientific/technological developments wouldn't be hitting us the same way now.
That said, I do get the sense from the article that the author is trying to do the right thing overall in this sense too, because they talk about being a small company and are marketing themselves based on good old-fashioned values like "we do a good job".
No. It is the AI companies that are externalizing their costs onto everyone else by stealing the work of others, flooding the zone with garbage, and then weeping about how they'll never survive if there's any regulation or enforcement of copyright law.
AI is another set of tooling. It can be used well or not, but arguing the morality of a tooling type (e.g drills) vs maybe a specific company (e.g Ryobi) seems an odd take to me.