It might as well be their real motto now.
Category: Editorial
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Marc Andreessen’s bad AI take
From The Intercept’s article, The Internet’s New Favorite AI Proposes Torturing Iranians and Surveilling Mosques:
To AI’s boosters — particularly those who stand to make a lot of money from it — concerns about bias and real-world harm are bad for business. Some dismiss critics as little more than clueless skeptics or luddites, while others, like famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, have taken a more radical turn following ChatGPT’s launch. Along with a batch of his associates, Andreessen, a longtime investor in AI companies and general proponent of mechanizing society, has spent the past several days in a state of general self-delight, sharing entertaining ChatGPT results on his Twitter timeline.RelatedHow Big Tech Manipulates Academia to Avoid Regulation
The criticisms of ChatGPT pushed Andreessen beyond his longtime position that Silicon Valley ought only to be celebrated, not scrutinized. The simple presence of ethical thinking about AI, he said, ought to be regarded as a form of censorship. “‘AI regulation’ = ‘AI ethics’ = ‘AI safety’ = ‘AI censorship,’” he wrote in a December 3 tweet. “AI is a tool for use by people,” he added two minutes later. “Censoring AI = censoring people.” It’s a radically pro-business stance even by the free market tastes of venture capital, one that suggests food inspectors keeping tainted meat out of your fridge amounts to censorship as well.
As much as Andreessen, OpenAI, and ChatGPT itself may all want us to believe it, even the smartest chatbot is closer to a highly sophisticated Magic 8 Ball than it is to a real person. And it’s people, not bots, who stand to suffer when “safety” is synonymous with censorship, and concern for a real-life Ali Mohammad [a hypothetical higher-risk person that ChatGPT created as an example] is seen as a roadblock before innovation.
Think about it. With an unearned position as a hero to many on Earth, taking credit for the hard work of other people or fortuitous circumstances, a lack of concern for those working under him, and the id of a fourteen-year-old boy, it’s clear that the comic book character that best exemplifies Elon Musk isn’t Tony Stark, but Zapp Brannigan.
Inform the men!”
A lot of tech workers — and according to some estimates, 25% of Twitter’s workforce — are people from other countries working on an H-1B visa. This temporary non-immigrant visa lets employers hire non-U.S.-citizen/non-U.S.-resident-alien professionals to work in “specialty occupations” that require at least a bachelor’s degree or the equivalent.
(My parents, both doctors, worked in the U.S. and thus had H-1B visas. I was already around when this took place, hence my “American” accent.)
The choice that Twitter employees had to make yesterday — quit or work at “Twitter 2.0” under a “hardcore”, random, capricious, ill-thought-out, workaholic leadership — wasn’t much of a choice for the ones on an H-1B visa. H-1Bs are tied to a specific employer, and quitting that employer means that you have 60 days to find a new employer to sponsor a new H-1B tied to the new employer, change your status, or leave the U.S..
For examples, see:
- My clock to leave USA has started: Indian man on H1B visa after Meta fired him
- Amazon fires 10,000 employees: Indian software engineers, H1B visa holders impacted badly
- Twitter job cuts become double whammy for H1B visa holders. What’s next for them
Under normal circumstances, that’s tricky. Under the current circumstances, with layoffs all over the tech sector, high inflation, and the threat of a recession, it’s much, much worse. The only choice for many H-1B holders at Twitter might be to stay and hope that life under new management — a.k.a. “Space Karen” — isn’t as hellish as many people predict. The problem is that so far, it’s been a total clown show.
Also not helping: racist nationalist toolbags like this guy:
If you know any H-1B holders working at Twitter or under Twitter-like circumstances, support them as best you can.
With the various layoffs in the San Francisco Bay Area (I have to specify, since I live in “The Other Bay Area”), it’s going to be difficult to book a doctor, dentist, or eye appointment for any time earlier than weeks into the new year — people are trying to see their doctors and dentists while their insurance is still in effect. Still, book your appointments now, unless you want to wait even longer.
If you use Twitter to log into non-Twitter software, sites, or systems, do this as soon as possible: Sign into that software, site, or systems and set up an alternate way to log in — whether via another service, such as Google, Facebook, or your Apple ID, or via good old-fashioned username and password.
As one techie at Twitter put it, “Entire teams representing critical infrastructure are voluntarily departing the company.” If accurate, it means that it would be a very bad idea to rely on Twitter as your only means of logging in.
Check your accounts!
Here’s the tweet:
Elon, there’s a bunch of us in SV who will come up tonight to help on the infra side to keep the site up.
If you need help just ask. — Michael Guimarin (@MichaelGuimarin) November 18, 2022
I’m sure he imagines himself as a hero gathering a rag-tag team to save a village being attacked by monsters and not, as one astute tweeter put it:
Me and the boys carpooling at 8pm on a thursday to help a multibillionaire who can’t pay his employees— Young Goodpostingman Brown (@yomi_olympic) November 18, 2022