Mastodawn

starling Dec 13

Fascinating story from a software dev Fedi friend, shared with permission to keep it anonymous:

❝A couple of days ago, I had an experience at work that made me understand one of the reasons why the chasm of opinion about LLMs is so deep and wide.

My department mostly does fiddly lowlevel work, [close to hardware]. A few of us don't use LLMs at all, a few use them sparingly, and one member is absolutely all-in. So during one of our morning meetings he suddenly started going off on a deeply disturbing diatribe about how we need to treat the LLMs “like slaves”.❞

1/

Paul Cantrell Dec 4

❝I said that I *absolutely in no way* want a slave, or a technology that simulates one. I want to do creative work using good tools. I *don't want* the experience of a slaver; in fact, I would go very far to never have that experience, because it is a demeaning and antihuman experience.❞

2/

Paul Cantrell Dec 4

❝He was completely unable to understand why. He kept arguing that since the LLM isn't an actual conscious person (which is correct), it ought to be treated like a slave, and that the arc of technology is to give everyone access to their own virtual slaves.❞

3/

Paul Cantrell Dec 4

❝It was *impossible* for me or anyone else present to get him to understand that *we don't want slaves, simulated or otherwise*.

I've thought about that a lot in the days since.❞

4/

Paul Cantrell Dec 4

I agree with the storyteller: the experience of having a slave is abhorrent, simulated or not, and this story is a window into something •deep• about the present moment. Even without having slaves, we are all in danger of having a •slaver mindset•. It’s a disease that’s running rampant now in billionaire-shaped techno-utopian circles.

I wrote this thread on the topic earlier:

https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/113295613785073188

…and even having written that, it’s still shocking — not surprising, exactly, but shocking — to hear those thoughts expressed so baldly by the colleague in the story above.

Paul Cantrell (@[email protected])

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] Guinan said it. This scene still gives me chills every time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T9TUeapBSQ What writers. What a pair of actors.

Hachyderm.io

@inthehands Norbert Wiener wrote in 1948, in the book that defined Cybernetics:

"Let us remember that the automatic machine is the precise economic equivalent of slave labor. Any labor which competes with slave labor must accept the economic consequences of slave labor.”

@emenel @jimbob @inthehands So labour-saving devices like dishwashers and washing machines are morally reprehensible, and the only ethical alternative is to do the work manually or pay someone a fair price for their time and labour? That’s quite a take…

Paul Cantrell Dec 4

You are confusing the words “economic” and “moral.”

@inthehands @acb also dishwashers etc don't occupy the same economic (and ethical) place in our society as industrial automation et al...

Kushnerin pelottava enkeli Dec 13

@emenel One of the biggest consequences being economic inefficiency and laziness. When labour is "free", there's no motivation to not waste it.

Poligofsky 🇨🇦 .. 🚫🤖Dec 4

The psychology of people who find their self-worth only in being superior to others, by having freedoms that those beneath them are denied.

Problem is, most people are not all or nothing on this, but somewhere on a continuum. It’s the necessity of poverty—and all steps on the ladder of wealth—to make those higher feel better than those lower. Slavery is one extreme of a very wide spectrum.

Simon Brooke Dec 5

@8r3n7 @inthehands As usual, there's a quote from a Scottish philosopher.

https://mastodon.scot/@simon_brooke/115462493377305270

Bryan L. Fordham Dec 4

@inthehands I'm confused and feel like I'm missing something. But this feels like a category error.

No, we don't want slaves, real or virtual. But a machine cannot be enslaved, any more than a hammer can be. It's a tool, leave it alone and it does nothing. Tools are meant to be used.

Which is not to say that all tools are amoral, or should always be used. A machine to grind up puppies is a tool, sure, and also terrible and should not exist. But you did not force it to exist.

You don't want to treat people like tools, which is what slavery does - they're not people, they're machines, less than human.

You also don't want to treat machines as humans.

What am I missing? It feels this is like arguing over the taste of blue.

Edited to add: To be clear, I find this person's coworkers feelings to be terrible and seriously question the person's ethics and morality. So please don't take anything I'm saying as trying to excuse it. I just feel conclusions are being drawn that I don't see or understand

Paul Cantrell Dec 4

@Bfordham
The category error you are making is thinking that the distinction is about the •tool• instead of the •mindset of the person• who is using the tool.

I’d also be disturbed by somebody who thinks of their hammer as a slave.

Bryan L. Fordham Dec 4

@inthehands I don't think it's a category error, but I was definitely misunderstanding

"Slavery is OK as long as it's not a human slave" is terrible. The idea what slavery isn't evil, it just needs, y'know, so tweaks... that's a frightening way to think.

All of which I agree with. My mistake was thinking you were trying to say something you weren't actually saying. That was my mistake, not yours, and I appreciate your response.

I will add that, while a machine cannot be enslaved, and I don't think using machines to automate things is bad. But when it becomes "we can just fire all the people" then you are, in fact, treating people like machines.

And that's not even to mention the number of actual people who work to make the LLM machine go brrrr. The person in the story is totally disregarding their labor and humanity and treating them as nothings, as slaves.

christian mock Dec 4

@Bfordham @inthehands I think the important point is that a slave is a *human* who's forced to do anything you order -- and a tool is a *thing*.
And someone who thinks of a tool that presents as human as a slave and sees no problem with that has no understanding of why slavery is bad, and that bothers me, because the next step is enslaving real humans again.

Bryan L. Fordham Dec 4

@cm @inthehands Totally agree with that.

Slavery is bad. That's a blanket statement I'm fine with. Who (or what) is enslaved is irrelevant.

I'd say again that that attitude does not elevate a machine to the level of a human, it lowers humans to the level of machines. Which is, of course, necessary to some extent to enslave people, you have to feel they are lesser.

Mrs.Malice 👾🍕Dec 4

@Bfordham Yep. That's the fun thing about granting machines humanity tho, whether it's to consider them "enslaved" or otherwise -- it dilutes what it means to be human. In other words, thinking/claiming that objects are any way equal to people -- in their capacity to be enslaved or otherwise -- is dehumanizing. And like @cm said, there's only one place to go from there.

Violet Madder Dec 4

@Bfordham @cm @inthehands

(only trouble with this is, using the term "again" makes it sound like we actually stopped slavery... Which has not happened yet...)

@cm @Bfordham @inthehands the problem is when a person or society decides to define (some) conscious beings as "things". Or even just as "lesser". The decision enables all kinds of cruelty.

Ref. Granny Weatherwax "sin is treating people as things."

Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦Dec 4

@inthehands @Bfordham what do you suppose he understood as the difference between a tool and a slave? Did he say why he used that specific term?
😰 #creepy

Bryan L. Fordham Dec 4

@deborahh @inthehands I mean, I have no way of knowing, but I would assume it's as bad as you think lol

I come from a family of carpenters, and that definitely shapes my view of "tools" as a category. They get used, they get broken, etc. They're things, right? But I have never thought "this saw is a slave" and someone who not only can't see that but, honestly, *wants* it to a slave? Wow. I do not want to work with that guy lol

Deborah Preuss, pcc 🇨🇦Dec 4

@Bfordham @inthehands I'm thinking: I was taught to respect my tools, so they'd serve me well and long. Tools are awesome.

And: I cannot fathom why the word "slave" is necessary - apart from craving power. 😢

Bryan L. Fordham Dec 4

@deborahh @inthehands 100% agree

@inthehands @Bfordham yeah this is what came to my mind too. I don’t think it’s meaningful to think of an LLM as being slave-like at all.

But listing it as a _positive_ about LLMs is deeply, deeply suspect. It’s not something one should want to be true.

Eggs now in different baskets.Dec 4

@inthehands @Bfordham Especially when the hammer has become sentient and has formed a gestalt mind with the other inhabitants of the toolbox.

@Bfordham @inthehands
I read it as someone who *wants and enjoys* the mentality of being the slave owner or master.

"Finally, *I* get to be in charge!"

Bryan L. Fordham Dec 4

@qlaras @inthehands Yes, I read it that way, too. I was thinking folks were making arguments that they weren't, that was my confusion.

Sassinake!Dec 4

@Bfordham @inthehands

but we know that most of the 'thinking' work of the LLMs - fast mapping things to regroup them and assign them a 'value' - is done by hundreds of people in sweatshops in the third world.

They spend hours classifying some terrible things, for peanuts.

Bill Hooker Dec 4

@Sassinake @Bfordham @inthehands

I think this is a valid and important point, but somewhat separate from the main thread here.

Even if it were not the case that LLMs involve a lot of sweatshop labour, it would still be a problem that someone wanted to view LLMs as slaves.

Bryan L. Fordham Dec 4

@sennoma @Sassinake @inthehands

Yes, two different situations. Both bad, but separate.

Bill Hooker Dec 4

@Bfordham @Sassinake @inthehands

Well, the connection is obvious (sweatshop owners would own slaves if they could). But the sociopath in the OP wasn't even considering that. ☹️ *shudder*

Sassinake!Dec 4

@sennoma @Bfordham @inthehands

Slaves are actually _more_ expensive than hourly wage workers... but what slavers want is the added 'power' over them: especially rape and torture.

Bill Hooker Dec 4

@Sassinake If that's true, I suspect it's mostly because capitalists can outsource the maintenance of worker bodies to the state (food stamps, health & housing subsidies), thereby paying less than a living wage without facing workforce attrition by death and disability.

And if I keep talking about this, I'm going to get sick. Please excuse me from this conversation now. Peace. 🙏

@Bfordham @inthehands

Sassinake!Dec 4

@sennoma @Bfordham @inthehands

OP should ask if they know about that.

Bill Hooker Dec 4

@Sassinake Only if OP wants them to have a stroke. 🤣

@Bfordham @inthehands

@inthehands seems like a craving for power, not through being empowered but rather through having power over another

William Pietri Dec 4

@inthehands Great stuff. For a long time I've thought that business has shifted toward thinking of customers as livestock. Monopolists and oligopolists don't have to treat customers like respected peers, so it's easy to drift to treating them like an exploitable resource.

I think that has laid the groundwork for the slaver mentality, one where disregard turns into a sick glee.

Paul Cantrell Dec 4

@williampietri
Agreed. I was on a similar rant here:
https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/115600978096902119

Paul Cantrell (@[email protected])

Say what you will about consumerism, but at least ripping people off is a form of having an actual relationship between human beings. An awful, sick relationship, but a relationship! Sales and marketing require that, at some level, you still view customers as people with thoughts and needs and desires and inner lives. Now increasingly we run into things like the OP where even ripping people off is more acknowledgement of humanity than a company is willing to give. 5/

Hachyderm.io

Cassandra is only carbon now Dec 4

@inthehands Very much so damned by their goals and ambitions, if not.by their accomplishments.

Olga Lovick (she/her)Dec 4

@inthehands I have felt like that for a long time about Siri and Alexa! (And the fact that both are gendered as women makes it even harder.)

Mx. Aria Stewart Dec 5

@transitionalaspect @inthehands Oh I have _feelings_ about this, especially American Voice 5.

See the default for American Siri is female — subordinate, idealized feminine subservience. You can change it to a male voice, of course, and it is in some regions. Not everyone has the same relationship to being served and who feels safe and trusted with those tasks — in some cultures that might be men, of another class or nationality — that makes people feel right in their place in the world. But in the US, quite often it's a not-quite-Mom, not-quite-girlfriend, maybe-a-secretary voice that makes us feel at ease.

But of course not for everyone. We need to represent the culture we're in to really hit it with everyone. A lot of Americans rightly notice that it's rather binary, man or woman. So Apple introduces American Voice 5. An explicitly nonbinary voice. It feels very natural and friendly, just like a helpful person who’ll give you just what you ask for.

Where is that training of us coming from? Why does that sound so reassuringly servile, unthreatening, invisible?

Try your local coffeeshop. Listen to the staff.

So many of them sound just like American Voice 5.

@aredridel I did see an interesting video short recently (I forget which service) on how AI voices have changed through time, as a reflection of how our culture thought of AI.

Mx. Aria Stewart Dec 5

@alpha Yes! I find the sociology of it fascinating, even if the end result i find truly unnerving.

Olga Lovick (she/her)Dec 5

@aredridel *shudders* @inthehands

Epic Null Dec 4

@inthehands I feel like this answers questions I would never think to ask

@inthehands Marx should be required reading in schools, not so much to make everyone Marxists but to understand how labor exists as an intrinsic human force in the world. to call a computer program a slave is distasteful on an aesthetic and "what does the rest of this person's mental furniture look like" level, but the human labor that is very deliberately disappeared into LLMs - to sunder that Product so fully from the humans who made it possible, and then call *that* a slave, is truly obscene.

@inthehands could this be why AI is mostly embraced by middle management and upwards? People already used to manage other people find it natural to use AI. In addition to that they do not have deep knowledge of what they ask AI for. Could be that the developer in the story finally feels like he is achieving something.
A lot of assumption here, I know. But fun to speculate 😀

James Widman Dec 4

@inthehands
> Even without having slaves

the u.s. has the highest incarceration rate on the planet.

and prisoners are there often because they were coerced into pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit.

and they are forced to do labor for practically no money, especially agricultural work and manufacturing.

and practically everyone buys those goods.

so while you as an individual might not personally be holding anyone captive and forcing them to do labor, we as a country definitely do.

James Widman Dec 4

@inthehands you're worried about people having a •slaver mindset• (which, you're not wrong to do that worrying), but there has never been a time in a single american's life when they were not under a lot of social pressure to be *civil* and *polite* with people who uphold the slaver mindset that runs the country. That's why it continues. (Well, that's the 2nd biggest cause, with the 1st being racism.)

Morgan ⚧️Dec 4

@JamesWidman @inthehands additionally, the technology most of us use every day is powered by metals mined using slavery in Africa. Most of us have a lot of slavery to reckon with--last I saw even Fairphone, named that way specifically to signal using fair labor practices whenever possible, uses CPUs with materials from slave labor. Being an abolitionist of any sort requires us to be mindful of our consumption, because *most things* we can consume financially support slavers and not workers

James Widman Dec 4

@raphaelmorgan yes, but... while individual purchasing decisions can raise a little awareness, they're not going to solve the problem.

Ultimately we need a constitutional amendment that prohibits the import of any goods whose supply chain involved the labor of people held captive, or of people not paid a living wage. And we need a movement that primaries reps/senators/governors that don't push for this.

James Widman Dec 4

We need a constitutional framework that would (1) force those CPUs to be blocked at customs and sent back, and (2) fine the company that tried to import them in terms of a percentage of its annual revenue.

The problem with slave sourced metals in computing is that it is nearly impossible to verify the source of valuable metals in end products. Even when you try to source things yourself, you can't control the entire supply chain, and even if you could, someone could simply smuggle in cheaper slave sourced materials to replace your ethically sourced materials, and pocket the difference. I don't know about all companies or metals, but Fairphone has a fund to assist rural gold mining communities to help offset the inherent evil of the gold in CPUs, which is the best anyone can reasonably do without building an alternative mobile CPU manufacturer to Qualcomm.

Morgan ⚧️Dec 4

@JamesWidman yeah, to actually stop it absolutely has to be a group effort. Mindfulness of our own consumption is just step 1, and raising awareness is how we find other people to organize with

klausfiend has moved Dec 5

@JamesWidman @inthehands Sidebar: not only does the US have the highest _rate_ of incarceration of any country, it also has the largest incarcerated _population_ of any country.

Yep, even more prisoners than nations like China and India, both of which are fully 3x more populous, one of which is a bona fide autocracy.

Even though slavery is no longer the law of the land, we can't help but keep trying to reinvent it.

James Widman Dec 5

@klausfiend @inthehands
> Even though slavery is no longer the law of the land,

unfortunately, there is a loophole here:

https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/

The loophole is "except as a punishment for crime".

This means that, ever since 1865, racist lawmakers have had this extra motive to invent new "crimes"; e.g.:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-racism-flourished-under-prohibition-180967406/

there is an effort to close this loophole:
https://www.npr.org/2020/12/03/942413221/democrats-push-abolition-amendment-to-fully-erase-slavery-from-u-s-constitution

...but i don't know what the current status is.

U.S. Constitution - Thirteenth Amendment | Resources | Constitution Annotated | Congress.gov | Library of Congress

The original text of the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

klausfiend has moved Dec 5

@JamesWidman @inthehands Yeah, it's a big ugly "carve-out". Ava DuVernay's documentary about it will make you tear your hair out.

Marc Trius Dec 4

@inthehands have you ever read Asimov's The Naked Sun? It says on the back of the book that it's a story about robots, but actually it's a story about what happens to a society when it has unlimited slaves who can't rebel

Marc Trius Dec 4

@inthehands it other words, it's not about the robots, it's about the people. And it's also about all the "sci-fi pilled billionaires" who completely misunderstood the sci-fi they were reading.

Paul Cantrell Dec 4

I have not read it, and it sounds like I should!