He resigned and now what? There are thousands willing to do his role, and many labs are competing in that race.
His resignation and his statement doesn't do anything but buy him attention which is what all this post about in my opinion.
His resignation and his statement doesn't do anything but buy him attention which is what all this post about in my opinion.
> Sarah: That's not good enough.
> Terminator: No one must follow your work.
And by resigning he no longer has to feel personally guilty for what happens.
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.
Disgust is a tremendously powerful thing.
In any case, you didn't answer the question. The question is the direct consequence of your proposal. Not answering "yes" is incongruent, it's what you're advocating for; that one should do jobs that cause societal carnage, because otherwise someone worse than you might, and cause more damage. You're switching topics.
> 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.
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?
In your analogy the correct thing to do would be to call the authorities to help. The problem with the analogy is that there isn't a 911 number to call for this scenario. You need to appeal to the people who have the power to do something about the situation. Quitting in a very public way is one way to get someone with that authority to do something about it. I don't really see a better alternative.
Currently what we have with these people publicly quitting because "immoral things are happening" at AI labs are essentially crying wolf, and if/when something really worth taking action on does come up, it's pretty likely that many will be too jaded to care and as such there will be no/too little action.
The original point I was making is that the fact that someone else will take the job is not a reason to keep doing that job which you view as immoral. I guess he could go full whistleblower, but I don't really feel like that's a fair standard to have of people - that takes a lot of courage and is usually quite rare. I think it's fully legitimate to quit a job you disagree with on moral grounds. I can understand that people don't want to risk being sued by a rich and powerful corporation for leaking confidential information to the public, so bringing evidence to light can be hard to do. I can also understand criticizing him for this, but I don't think most people would even forgo the paycheck in the first place for their morals, so the bar is pretty low for me.
You also need to consider 2nd order effects and beyond.
1. Does that matter ? There are thousands willing to do my role - what impact does that have on me doing it or not?
2. Why weren’t these thousands doing it already?
Willing to and able to are different things
I see a fast moving train with no brakes. Just like biological evolution, we are locked in an a global technological arm race, that is beyond any individual. It is as if the universe decided to wake up and run, who are you to say no?
One would argue that the best solution for this is to own the most sophisticated AI that is aligned with what we perceive as good values. Because given the situation we are in, if those tools are going to be gods anytime soon, then we better have some gods working on our side.
Take China, for example. Look at any recent ML conference, and see the fraction of articles majority-authored from Chinese universities and labs. Do you think they'll slow things down anytime soon? I don't think so!
It's a global arms race, and we're just spectators.
Does the Kremlin being excited about a tech mean anything of the tech doesn’t deliver?