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.
But organizations are made of humans. Jacob leaving might've moved some of his coworkers and his counterparts at OpenAI. And the same can be said for those who would fill positions at the frontier. Then finally there is a political component; his post went viral, 100K+ users appear to agree with it, and it is further fuel to the fire for regulation, which we already know most Americans want.
Others being moved to the point of also leaving would only worsen the effect. A viral post too can worsen the effect as it's now even less likely that someone with scruples who qualifies for the position(s) will apply. And those in it primarily for the money - and couldn't care less about the morals - will happily send in their CVs after becoming aware of the post.
I'm utterly unconvinced. Others who are moved don't have to leave to effect change. And there's a very small pool of people on the planet who are at least as qualified as Jacob to work on pretraining at Anthropic. And when they'll join they'll have to ramp up. And you haven't addressed any of the positive effects of virality.
No, others don't have to leave. Will Jacob's leaving cause a perspective shift in anyone remaining there? Seriously doubt it. I don't see what a new person ramping up has to do with this. And I don't really see any positive effect of virality; this is a replay of the past (see Geoffrey Hinton and Timnit Gebru[0] for example) and nothing has come of it, beyond talk for maybe a couple days to a couple weeks.
> 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?
Well we're not debating the morality of it, the question is what he should do, given that he believes that it's immoral.
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.
By the time authorities get there, if they actually prioritize it (police in many places already have a track record for not being very responsive, unless there're actual signs of a crime), something may have already happened to the child. You don't know because you already left, expecting that someone else will take care of it, when you were already in a position to help ensure that child's safety. No, if you think something might be wrong you stay and monitor the situation best you can, so if something really does begin to actually begin to happen you can be a buffer and/or whistleblow.
At this point the analogy has entirely collapsed, your job is to develop AI. Unless you're advocating for some kind of sabotage or something, I'm not sure what you're really suggesting he do. If he continues to do the work he's directly contributing to the problem and harm that it you see it to be causing. Nothing is going to change if you continue working there business as usual. It's by drawing a line in the sand and refusing to take part in the problem that you're actually doing something about it, not by compromising your morals.
We have a pretty famous example, someone who's actions actually led to change: Edward Snowden. He didn't quit prematurely, crying to whoever would listen that he thought the US had a massive ongoing surveillance program. He actually stayed in the system which he was growing suspicious of, until he actually had proof of shenanigans and then he got as much of that proof as he could out before leaving.
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.
He did that because what they were doing was illegal and there was a whistle blower program he could use to confront the issue, legally. That doesn't apply here. Not clear what you're suggesting he does differently.
Some of it was illegal. Most of it was permissible or grey zoned. There was no whistleblower program he could've used that would've led to anything more than sources getting shut down and the matter getting swept under a carpet. Nothing allowed for public disclosure, and without that there'd be little to no change. And no, it doesn't apply here because this is just someone crying wolf; there is no evidence that they can bring forth to support their claim of danger because they vacated a position that could've allowed them access to that evidence if there were to be any.
Okay, so your argument is that he should disclose trade secrets/confidential information and face both civil and criminal litigation and ruin his life like Edward Snowden? Before your argument was that it doesn't matter if he quits because someone else will just replace his job. This doesn't seem like a reasonable sacrifice to demand of someone, especially given the prior argument.
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.
The best way to get corporate America to listen is making RoI suffer. If you are the most qualified, everyone other than you is less qualified for the job, and likely to bring in more waste. It's the only language this stupid damn country understands. Just the loss of tribal knowledge, shifting of workload, and morale hits are likely to be far more devastating than anyone here probably wants to admit, because most here completely dismiss the role of irrational modes of thought in psychological self-regulation.
Right, I assume tomorrow you'll be applying for the next Nazi camp guard vacancy? After all, if you don't do it, someone with less scruples likely will.
Today we see the Nazis as bad. Do you think they saw themselves as such? They had an ideal, and they worked towards it. And I'd say they're were many who didn't care about that ideal and just wanted a job. You can't compare the morals of today with yesterday, or judge the ideals of a person or group without relevant context.
What's your point? If someone murders your family in cold blood "with an ideal" and they "see themselves as good", for example because they believe your family consists of infidels, does that make a difference?
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.
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.