> This is literally everyone's job. It's the whole point of society.
To a degree, yes - but I think if it's taken too far it becomes a trap that many people seeking power lay out.
Benjamin Franklin said it best: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
That being said, I do agree with part of your point. The purpose of having a society is that collective action lets us do amazing things like build airplanes, that would be otherwise impossible. In order to succeed at that we need some rules that everyone plays by, which involve giving up some freedoms - or the "social contract".
The more of a safety net a society provides, the more restrictive the society must be. Optimizing for this is known as politics.
I think history has shown us that the proper balance is one where we optimize for maximum elbow room, without letting people die on the streets. Trying to provide the illusion of safety and restrict interesting technology to protect a small percentage of the population is on the wrong side of this balance.
Maybe we try it, and see what the effect actually are, rather than guessing. If it becomes a major problem, then address it - in the least restrictive way possible.
Fun fact, that quote has been entirely misinterpreted.
> He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it.
> It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.
> Fun fact, that quote has been entirely misinterpreted.
I don't think so. From the original text [1]:
"In fine, we have the most sensible Concern for the poor distressed Inhabitants of the Frontiers. We have taken every Step in our Power, consistent with the just Rights of the Freemen of Pennsylvania, for their Relief, and we have Reason to believe, that in the Midst of their Distresses they themselves do not wish us to go farther. Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
This was excerpted from writing that was largely about ongoing dispute with the crown (the Governor) about the abuse of authority coming from Britain. The crown was rejecting pretty much every bill they were creating:
"Our Assemblies have of late had so many Supply Bills, and of such different Kinds, rejected on various Pretences; Some for not complying with obsolete occasional Instructions (tho’ other Acts exactly of the same Tenor had been past since those Instructions, and received the Royal Assent;) Some for being inconsistent with the supposed Spirit of an Act of Parliament, when the Act itself did not any way affect us, being made expresly for other Colonies; Some for being, as the Governor was pleased to say, “of an extraordinary Nature,” without informing us wherein that extraordinary Nature consisted; and others for disagreeing with new discovered Meanings, and forced Constructions of a Clause in the Proprietary Commission; that we are now really at a Loss to divine what Bill can possibly pass."
They were ready to just throw up their hands and give up:
"we see little Use of Assemblies in this Particular; and think we might as well leave it to the Governor or Proprietaries to make for us what Supply Laws they please, and save ourselves and the Country the Expence and Trouble."
In fact, they had specifically written into the bill the ability for the Governor to exempt anyone he wanted from the tax, including the Penns:
"And we being as desirous as the Governor to avoid any Dispute on that Head, have so framed the Bill as to submit it entirely to his Majesty’s Royal Determination, whether that Estate has or has not a Right to such Exemption."
The quote is clearly derived from Franklin's frustration with the governor and abuse of authority.
Also, while that's the first appearance of the quote, it's not the last time he used it. He also reiterated it as an envoy to England during negotiations to prevent the war [2].
Additionally, a similar quote was from well before either in Poor Richard's Almanac in 1738, that also illustrates his thinking [3] and shows that he was well aware of the plain meaning of what he was saying, it certainly wasn't limited to a tax dispute:
"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power."
Finally, Franklin was obviously pleased about the message and interpretation of the quote, since he had no issue with it being used as the motto on the title page of An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania (1759) which Franklin published, but didn't author.
It's not a "smear." Besides, you're the one bandying "extreme left" around.
I think if you read "job" to mean "social obligation" or "responsibility," you'll understand that the GP's statement is essentially the Hobbesian one. If you read it to mean "the thing someone pays you to do," you'll get a very silly (and obviously incorrect) argument.
> I think if you read "job" to mean "social obligation" or "responsibility," you'll understand that the GP's statement is essentially the Hobbesian one
Let's read it as "responsibility". No, I don't agree with you on the statement being equivalent to what you wrote earlier. Different people can have different responsibilities in the world. "Making things safe for our most vulnerable individuals" is not a responsibility that belongs to literally every person in the world. It's okay if someone just makes furniture that's safe for the average person, while it has a sharp edge that can hurt a mentally unstable person.
Carpenters try to solve those problems. When it’s their mother or their son. Unless you believe empathy is a political alignment, a sad and confusing world for you.
I never said "no carpenter" tries to solve mental problems for mentally troubled people. I said it's fine if "a carpenter" just focuses on carpentry instead of people. Of course some carpenters can focus on both, that's great. But it's not everybody's job. This is just a factually accurate statement about the world. Every single person on this planet does not have the same job.
I'm not here to promote "right wing" ideology or any other political agenda. I'm stating - as a matter of fact - that different people have different jobs and different responsibilities. I'm also stating - as an opinion - that that's okay.
If you have kids, that's a job. If you have pets, that's a job. If you maintain a social circle, that's a job. If you have a job, that's also a job. I'd argue it's your job to restrain from stabbing random strangers in the street.
Maybe "responsibility" is a better term, or maybe that's too strong too. You're not going to be paid for many of these things or penalized if you don't, but living a life outside of any expectations towards other people does not a healthy society create.
> I'd argue it's your job to restrain from stabbing random strangers in the street.
Sure, I agree with you, we all have a responsibility to restrain ourselves from stabbing random people in the street. Do we all have a responsibility to make the world "safe" for the most vulnerable people amongst us? No. It's great that we have some people working on that, like mental health professionals, or city councilmembers, but every single person does not and should not work on that particular thing.
I'm tired of the activism too. I would love to have less of that and more complex discussion that acknowledges the myriad takes on political organization, political economy, economics, basic ethics, etc. that are out there. Forcing everything into left-vs-right isn't calling out activism, it's turning discussion into ideological conflict.
I think you’re taking the “job” bit too literally. As someone else said, “responsibility” might be a better term. We all act (vote, talk, help, purchase etc) and have the ability to do so in a way which is ethically informed.
You could say it’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure that the important jobs are being done by someone.
Yes, we all have a various moral obligations. Do all of us have a "responsibility" to make the world safe for our most vulnerable individuals? No. A barista will make a hot coffee when asked, knowing it can hurt people who might spill it. A barista does not have a "responsibility" to make only medium-heated coffee. At the same time, there are people in the world who try to make good tradeoffs with regards to coffee temperature (e.g. MacDonalds corporate, or lawmakers setting an upper limit to allowed coffee temp). So at the same time, one person might make an effort to make coffee safe for vulnerable persons, while another person might just have a responsibility to serve coffee at whatever temperature was decided by the other people. Different people can have different responsibilities in the world.
> This is the most extreme left viewpoint I have ever heard in my life.
I hope this is hyperbolic.
>> This is literally everyone's job. It's the whole point of society.
If viewed through a political lense, I can see how you'd interpret it as a left-leaning ideology.
If viewed objectively with the best possible interpretation, I think the statement is factually correct - we banded together, like most pack animals, for mutual security.
It depends. I don't think OpenAI (or anyone else selling products to the general audience) should be forced to make their products so safe that they can't possibly harm anyone under any circumstance. That's just going to make the product useless (like many LLMs currently are, depending on the topic). However that's a very different standard than the original comment which stated:
> I suspect Altman/Brockman/Murati intended for this thing to be dangerous for mentally unwell users, using the exact same logic as tobacco companies.
Tobacco companies knew about the dangers of their products, and they purposefully downplayed them, manipulated research, and exploited addictive properties of their products for profit, which caused great harm to society.
Disclosing all known (or potential) dangers of your products and not purposefully exploiting society (psychologically, physiologically, financially, or otherwise) is a standard that every company should be forced to meet.
Having seem far too many orgs implode because of that new 1%, no it really isn't. Replacing greed with self-righteousness as the original sin of those in power does not help anyone.
Society can't be built with the idea that everything has to work for the most troubled and challenging individuals.
We build cars, even though some alcoholics drive drunk. We could make cars safer for them by mandating a steering wheel lock with breathalazyer for every car, but we choose to not do that because it's expensive.
We have horror movies, even though some people really freak out from watching horror movies, to the point where they have to be placed in mental asylums for extended periods of time. We could outlaw horror movies to reduce the strain on these mentally troubled individuals, but we choose to not do that because horror movies are cool.
> Society can't be built with the idea that everything has to work for the most troubled and challenging individuals.
That's a far cry from saying the sellers are free from any responsibility.
Cars are highly engineered AND regulated because they have a tendency to kill their operators and pedestrians. It does cost more, but you're not allowed to sell a car that can't pass safety standards.
OpenAI have created a shiny new tool with no regulation. Great! It can drive progress or cause harm. I think they deserve credit for both.
> Cars are highly engineered AND regulated because they have a tendency to kill their operators and pedestrians. It does cost more, but you're not allowed to sell a car that can't pass safety standards.
But you are allowed to sell a car without a mechanical steering wheel lock connected to a breathalyzer. Remember, this discussion isn't about "should technology be made safe for the average person", this discussion is about "should technology be made safe for the most vulnerable amongst us". In the context of cars, alcoholics are definitely within this "most vulnerable" group. And yet, car safety standards do not require engine startup to check for a breathalyzer result.
> OpenAI have created a shiny new tool with no regulation. Great! It can drive progress or cause harm. I think they deserve credit for both.
I didn't make an argument for "no regulation", so this is not really related to anything I said.
Maybe so. But we still have to draw the line somewhere. You can always point to the next costly car safety innovation and say that mandating that thing would improve safety.
>Society can't be built with the idea that everything has to work for the most troubled and challenging individuals.
But it is, nearly every product, procedure, process is aimed at the lowest common denominator, it's the entire reasoning warning labels exist, or fail safe systems (like airbags) exist.
If every product or process was truly aimed at the lowest common denominator, then we wouldn't have warning labels on hot coffee, we would instead have medium-heated coffee.
My point is that hot coffee is still being sold everywhere, even though we know for a fact that it's dangerous for our most vulnerable individuals. Mentally unstable people will sometimes spill coffee and when the coffee is hot it causes burns. If we really wanted to make coffee safe for our most vulnerable individuals, we would outlaw hot coffee, and just have medium-heated coffee instead. So the existence of "warning labels on hot coffee" is really evidence for my point, not evidence for your point.
then you would agree that warning labels are the lowest common denominator solution to a well known fact, vis-a-vis all processes, products, & procedures are aimed at the lowest factor.
I don't know what that sentence means. But I know it doesn't mean "warning labels solve the problem that everything has to work for the most troubled and challenging individuals", which is what this discussion was about at least a few messages ago.
It's not our job to make the world safe for fundamentally unsafe people.