Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid - welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful you’ll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cut’n’paste it into its own post — there’s no quota for posting and the bar really isn’t that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned so many “esoteric” right wing freaks, but there’s no appropriate sneer-space for them. I’m talking redscare-ish, reality challenged “culture critics” who write about everything but understand nothing. I’m talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. They’re inescapable at this point, yet I don’t see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldn’t be surgeons because they didn’t believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I can’t escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard - both for starting this, and for covering the previous week. We should get a bot to automate this...)
I was going to offer this up as a sneer but I think the author is probably feeling very unwell and upset
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/wpwQtRwcKsbd4wxXf/my-ai-slavery-interviews-are-censored-on-lw-by-default
also using LLMs is probably not helping their case
Between the cryptocurrency, the dust-speck multiplication, and the complete misunderstanding of computing, I'm honestly impressed that this is at all ethically coherent. But she does seem to care, even if her facts are all wrong. I suppose that it's hard to avoid sneering Robin Hanson if one has any ethics at all. Top comment is my choice sneer:
I don't think she's using GPT in the comments. Quoting from her comment on one of her posts:
(2) has a big "if" in there, but otherwise yeah, makes sense. I think it rhymes with my post on this from last year:
I was confused too, but then I conceptualized capitalism and the sheer hatred lurking within human hearts. Humans are gleefully horrible towards each other. Our civilization isn't morally adequate. I guess it is cool to learn that somebody addicted to ChatGPT can still perceive the issue; I was too cynical. I also put Bryson 2009, "Robots Should Be Slaves" on my reading list, which I surely will not regret.
These bozos A - actively want slaves and B - work on enslaving humans first.
That thing being said, the notion of slavery and AI is a complicated one to me.
The first reference point is a (non mistreated) sled dog. Is slavery an appropriate term for them ? On one hand, they are forced to work, are not paid, and their freedom is infringed. On the other, it's not like it's against their will, the life of a wild dog is meaningfully different but not better than a sleigh dog, and (most) sleigh dogs don't actively try to escape and be free. And while dogs are not person, they are sentient being ; it's very possible IF we ever succeed at making an AI it end on that intelligence level.
The second reference point is a though experiment. Let's say you have created a sentient AI, and you want to ethically employ that person. What is the appropriate compensation ? We give money and free time to humans. But that work because of human specific factors : they appreciate different ways of getting sustainance, and have goals inherent to them.
But an artificial intelligence may have neither of that. Like while I like duck and some people prefer beef, but an AI by default don't necessarily have preference in term of electricity, and may not be able to move from server to server. They also may not have anything to do outside of work ? Like, it would not be surprising that they would just get bored if given free time, and they may not have urges or hobbies outside of work.
So if we ever get to that point - which isn't a certainty to me, it's certainly something harder than fusion to achieve - there will be a lot of anthropology (AI-logy ?) to determine they need, which may plausibly be "nothing outside of sustainance and having a job"
We often conflate human-level intelligence with litterally being a human. But, any hypothetical AI is likely to not be a human at all, even if they have the same level of intelligence.
WRT animal domestication, I mean there are plenty of ethicists who could credibly argue that it's a form of abuse. IMO it's not great.
WRT the rest- kind of riffing on your first sentence- we haven't even sorted out those things for people, really.