I think it's related. The nature of the wage work likely also self-selects for people who simply enjoy coding and being removed from the bigger picture problems they are solving.
Im on the side of only enjoy coding to solve problems and i skipped software engineering and coding for work explicitly because i did not want to participate in that dynamic of being removed from the problems. instead i went into business analytics, and now that AI is gaining traction I am able to do more of what I love - improving processes and automation - without ever really needing to "pay dues" doing grunt work I never cared to be skilled at in the first place unless it was necessary.
I wonder if DRY is still a principle worth holding onto in the AI coding era. I mean it probably is, but this feels like enough of a shift in coding design that re-evaluating principles designed for human-only coding might be worth the effort
TBH I think its ability to structure unstructured data is what makes it a powerhouse tool and there is so much juice to squeeze there that we can make process improvements for years even if it doesnt get any better at general intelligence.
If I had a pdf printout of a table, the workflow i used to have to use to get that back into a table data structure to use for automation was hard (annoying). dedicated OCR tools with limitations on inputs, multiple models in that tool for the different ways the paper the table was on might be formatted. it took hours for a new input format
now i can take a photo of something with my phone and get a data table in like 30 seconds.
people seem so desperate to outsource their thinking to these models and operating at the limits of their capability, but i have been having a blast using it to cut through so much tedium that werent unsolved problems but required enough specialized tooling and custom config to be left alone unless you really had to
this fits into what youre saying with using it to do the grunt work i find boring i suppose, but feels a little bit more than that - like it has opened a lot of doors to spaces that had grunt work that wasnt worth doing for the end result previously but now it is
no it really isnt. the value of crypto as it relates to FIAT is in trading volume over time, and it does not mean anyone needs to be a fool left holding the bag unless the trading volume decreases and doesnt return.
I want to buy something and use BTC as a medium for exchange. I take $10,000, buy BTC, send BTC to the seller, the seller takes the BTC and exchanges it for $10,000
However, we are not the only buyers and sellers and it takes time for the transfer to go through. So you have a variable amount of $ being held against the fixed amount of BTC, albeit with a variable amount available for purchase.
so i buy some BTC to make my trade, the amount of BTC decreases, the cost to buy more goes up. another person buys for the same reason. they spend more $ per BTC, but it doesnt matter - the value of what they are buying is the same so they buy less BTC. this happens for many people all concurrently.
the seller receives my BTC and then one of two things happens.. if trading volume has increased since i sent it to them then the BTC is more valuable and they make extra money. or if the trading volume has decreased since i sent it to them then the make a little bit less money.
there is a minor gaming of the system that happens with people trying to buy while trading volume is on the rise and then sell back while trading volume starts to decrease. this is why it looks like an MLM / scam - because this obviously doesnt scale, it isnt objectively valuable to increase competition for the resource while its needed to then try to release all that was purchased back into the trading pool while no one needs it. It is just a situation that is gameable in small doses if only a few actors do it.
People buying BTC for no reason other than to sell it back creates a gap in value on the other side for the sellers who need to sell the BTC they received in exchange for goods they valued at a specific $ value. The burden will be distributed across all the late sellers as trading volume decreases.
However, they dont need to sell the BTC if they would take a loss. They could just hold it until trading volume goes back up again, assuming trading volume is just fluctuating with standard customer behavior and not a change in belief of the stability of the currency.
Ultimately, the burden only really needs to be felt by those people who are buying the coin near its peaks who are trying to flip it and then missing their sell window. Actual vendors have wiggle room, as they only lose their COGS - even though they have their Revenue tied up in BTC, so they are still making profit if they sell, just a little bit less. the traders trying to game the system short term, however, are the ones who have more at risk as they have bought the BTC with after-tax liquid funds and need to sell it at enough of a higher price so that they make more profit after transaction fees as compared to alternative investments. As the price of BTC drops, they are the ones who are forced to sell at a minor loss and move the funds to other investments they believe are gaining value to avoid keeping the value tied up beyond their investment window waiting for the price to come back up.
The value proposition for holding BTC long term is basically a claim that the use of digital currency as an exchange of value will be so much more common in the future and BTC will be used for it, such that even times of "low trading volume" then will make current all time highs (in active trading volume) look tiny, even when accounting for the increase in tradable BTC that will come with all the BTC not currently in circulation do to people holding and waiting for that time to come.
So the traders rug pulling each other is kind of just a subplot going on with crypto and completely avoidable while still investing in crypto.
In addition to the other comment about perishables, storage space is another meaningful limiting factor that can vary with income level. Both the raw volume of available storage and the quality of the storage on things like temperature control, energy usage, accessibility, etc
Yes, actually - being right and out of business is much better than being wrong and in business when it comes to ethics and morals. I am sure you could find a lot of moral values you would simply refuse to compromise on for the sake of business. the line between moral value and heavy preference, however, is blurry - and is probably where most people have AI placed on the moral spectrum right now. Being out of business shouldn't be a death sentence, and if it is then maybe we are overlooking something more significant.
I am in a different camp altogether on AI, though, and would happily continue to do business with it. I genuinely do not see the difference between it and the computer in general. I could even argue it's the same as the printing press.
What exactly is the moral dilemma with AI? We are all reading this message on devices built off of far more ethically questionable operations. that's not to say two things cant both be bad, but it just looks to me like people are using the moral argument as a means to avoid learning something new while being able to virtue signal how ethical they are about it, while at the same time they refuse to sacrifice things they are already accustomed to for ethical reasons when they learn more about it. It just all seems rather convenient.
the main issue I see talked about with it is in unethical model training, but let me know of others. Personally, I think you can separate the process from the product. A product isnt unethical just because unethical processes were used to create it. The creator/perpetrator of the unethical process should be held accountable and all benefits taken back as to kill any perceived incentive to perform the actions, but once the damage is done why let it happen in vain? For example, should we let people die rather than use medical knowledge gained unethically?
Maybe we should be targeting these AI companies if they are unethical and stop them from training any new models using the same unethical practices, hold them accountable for their actions, and distribute the intellectual property and profits gained from existing models to the public, but models that are already trained can actually be used for good and I personally see it as unethical not to.
Sorry for the ramble, but it is a very interesting topic that should probably have as much discussion around it as we can get
> Yes, actually - being right and out of business is much better than being wrong and in business when it comes to ethics and morals.
Yes, but since you are out of business you no longer have an opportunity to fix that situation or adapt it to your morals. It's final.
Turning the page is a valid choice though. Sometimes a clean slate is what you need.
> Being out of business shouldn't be a death sentence, and if it is then maybe we are overlooking something more significant.
Fair point! It feels like a death sentence when you put so much into it though -- a part of you IS dying. It's a natural reflex to revolt at the thought.
> For example, should we let people die rather than use medical knowledge gained unethically?
Depends if you are doing it 'for their own good' or not.
Also the ends do not justify the means in the world of morals we are discussing -- that is pragmatism / utilitarianism and belongs to the world of the material not the ideal.
Finally - Who determines what is ethical? beyond the 'golden rule'? This is the most important factor. I'm not implying ethics are ALL relative, but beyond the basics they are, and who determines that is more important than the context or the particulars.
>Yes, but since you are out of business you no longer have an opportunity to fix that situation or adapt it to your morals. It's final.
Lots of room for nuance here, but generally Id say its more pragmatic to pivot your business to one that aligns with your morals and is still feasible, rather than convince yourself youre going to influence something you have no control over while compromising on your values. i am going to emphasize the relevance of something being an actual moral or ethical dilemma vs something being a very deep personal preference or matter of identity/personal branding.
>Fair point! It feels like a death sentence when you put so much into it though -- a part of you IS dying. It's a natural reflex to revolt at the thought.
I agree, it is a real loss and I don't mean for it to be treated lightly but if we are talking about morals and potentially feeling forced to compromise them in order to survive, we should acknowledge it's not really a survival situation.
>Depends if you are doing it 'for their own good' or not.
what do you mean by this?
I am not posing a hypothetical. modern medicine has plenty of contributions to it from unethical sources. Should that information be stripped from medical textbooks and threaten to take licenses away from doctors who use it to inform their decision until we find an ethical way to relearn it? Knowing this would likely allow for large amounts of suffering to go untreated that could have otherwise been treated? I am sincerely trying not to make this sound like a loaded question
also, this is not saying the means are justified. I want to reiterate my point of explicitly not justifying the means and saying the actors involved in the means should be held maximally accountable.
I would think from your stance on the first bullet point you would agree here - as by removing the product from the process you are able to adapt it to your morals.
>Finally - Who determines what is ethical?
I agree that philosophically speaking all ethics are relative, and I was intending to make my point from the perspective of navigating the issues as in individual not as a collective making rules to enforce on others. So you. you determine what is ethical to you
However, there are a lot of systems already in place for determining what is deemed ethical behavior in areas where most everyone agrees some level of ethics is required. This is usually done through consensus and committees with people who are experts in ethics and experts in the relevant field its being applied to.
AI is new and this oversight does not exist yet, and it is imperative that we all participate in the conversation because we are all setting the tone for how this stuff will be handled. Every org may do it differently, and then whatever happens to be common practice will be written down as the guidelines
You should tell that to all the failed businesses Jobs had or was ousted out of. Hell, Trump hasn't really had a single successful business in his life.
Nothing is final until you draw your last breath.
>Who determines what is ethical? beyond the 'golden rule'?
To be frank, you're probably not the audience being appealed to in this post if you have to suggest "ethics can be relative". This is clearly a group of craftsmen offering their hands and knowledge. There are entire organizations who have guidelines if you need some legalese sense of what "ethical" is here.
> but once the damage is done why let it happen in vain?
Because there are no great ways to leverage the damage without perpetuating it. Who do you think pays for the hosting of these models? And what do you mean by distribute the IP and profits to the public? If this process will be facilitated by government, I don’t have faith they’ll be able to allocate capital well enough to keep the current operation sustainable.
I'll admit I did not have something specific in mind for how to disperse with the IP/Profits, that would be open for discussion. the main point would just be that the party breaking ethical standards is held accountable and it cannot be construed that incentives exist to elicit the behavior.
Is moving a bill around to have someone else pay for the hosting an issue? Is hosting an already built model itself an ethical concern?
I would argue I am never required to accept someone elses version of ethics, but the laws do have to agree to some sort of consensus. Generally i think we do a pretty good job with allowing people to adhere to their personal ethics without breaking the law
Surprisingly enough, I dont think there is much in the accountability front that you can organize. It's like the final layer of accountability. You can only act in a way defendable by your genuine morals and the consequences are what they are. Maybe you can be somewhat negotiable and adjust and push your morals to their limit in order to limit the negative effects to yourself, but if its a true moral i think you shouldnt fully break it. I think that level of accountability with yourself is necessary to have peace of mind. Everything else is out of your control, including whos ethics the consequences are bound to.
If you were the same as you are now and you were placed into what you believe to be a genuinely evil society, and you have to severely go against your morals to fit in and avoid negative consequence, are you going to do that?
>> The creator/perpetrator of the unethical process should be held accountable and all benefits taken back as to kill any perceived incentive to perform the actions, but once the damage is done why let it happen in vain?
That's very similar to other unethical processes(for example child labour), and we see that government is often either too slow to move or just not interested, and that's why people try to influence the market by changing what they buy.
It's similar for AI, some people don't use it so that they don't pay the creators (in money or in personal data) to train the next model, and at the same time signal to the companies that they wouldn't be future customers of the next model.
(I'm not necessarely in the group of people avoiding to use AI, but I can see their point)
I get that, it's just not the proper way to deliver justice and imo is unethical if the item you are boycotting has the ability to improve people's lives. Whether AI is at the level where we should consider not using it to be unethical is a different discussion (i dont think so yet, but see a future where it could be the case). i more so am on the point that I dont think it is unethical to continue using it even if the boycott method is effective at its goals. It is vigilante justice
> What exactly is the moral dilemma with AI? We are all reading this message on devices built off of far more ethically questionable operations.
The main difference is that for those devices, the people negatively affected by operations are far away in another country, and we're already conditioned to accept their exploitation as "that's just how the world works" or "they're better off that way". With AI, the people affected - those whose work was used to train, and those who lose jobs because of it - are much closer. For software engineers in particular, these are often colleagues and friends.
Right so then it is a matter of convenience disguised as an ethical problem. because they still arent boycotting the unethical processes effecting other people (by the same line of ethics that makes AI unethical in their view), just the ones effecting themselves
as opposed to the ethical concerns hitting home and waking them up as a call to action and even though it's a little unfortunate that they didnt care until it effected them, we could argue it is still a point of ethics because they are consistently applying the ethical standpoint unilaterally across their life now that theyve had a change of heart.
Im on the side of only enjoy coding to solve problems and i skipped software engineering and coding for work explicitly because i did not want to participate in that dynamic of being removed from the problems. instead i went into business analytics, and now that AI is gaining traction I am able to do more of what I love - improving processes and automation - without ever really needing to "pay dues" doing grunt work I never cared to be skilled at in the first place unless it was necessary.
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