OpenAI employees should unionize. Org leadership is never going to be benevolent. Stop begging for permission to exercise rights and do something about it.
https://code-cwa.org/organize is only a suggestion, pick whichever org is most likely to provide you with the support and leverage needed to defend yourself from management in concert with the executive branch of the federal government.
There's this ongoing attempt at Google called Alphabet Workers Union. Instead of simply negotiating for higher pay, their goals were all over the place according to their website: https://web.archive.org/web/20220305061423/https://alphabetw... "We are BIPOC workers who fight against totalitarianism." "Our union of 800+ members strives to protect Alphabet workers, our global society, and our world. We promote solidarity, democracy, and social and economic justice."
Today the site looks better, but still, you might wonder if Google planted them as a way to prevent a real union from forming.
Why wouldn't you hear this call year after year? It is a perpetual call, and while it will take years to move the needle, direction and velocity are what matter. I mean, would you hear about human rights in one year and that'd be the end of it? Definitely challenging with the individual exceptionalism mindset, despite the overwhelming data, but rarely is important work ever easy.
I'm a little tired of it and I don't even work there; but imagine working at a place where every week there seems to be a new convtroversial public letter...
Great so they want to be able to brag how they’re automating away jobs while getting rich but not at risk for repercussions of their pay day. If you lift the disparagement clauses what will OpenAI employees have to say about the dangers of the product that feeds their wallet? Honestly what a dog and pony show.
Part of me questions the ethics of taking money as an employee to build something dangerous, and at the same time seeking protections to speak about it. If truly concerned why still work there?
Maybe not as instantly catastrophic and detrimental but all their efforts have “we had to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki without a warning as the tech and power was too cool” vibes.
I doubt a warning would have changed the moral calculus anyway (it's dubious that the warning would result in a civilian evacuation), but given the war mentality at the time it would have been asking quite a lot from the guys fighting. This was a war in which guys were collecting skulls as trophies, well into a "not in the mood to take prisoners" mentality, in a "not surrendering after your capitol city is firebombed for two hours, killing 100 thousand" mentality. Given this context, expecting one side to warn another about an impending air raid just doesn't seem realistic.
The warning was on the table, so it was realistic, but the people dropping the bomb wanted to blow up a city. The warning was in the form of a demonstration of the power away from a city that could have caused the Japanese to change their path in the war. Instead we destroyed them because we were greedy.
Hand waving away a warning as not valuable because people were extra vicious back then is the exact kind of ignorance I’m talking about. To not even try is pathetic, and just blood lust.
The same for OpenAI, to guarantee you can preach about AI danger to the public while developing the danger is just ignorance of one’s own deeds.
The bomb may have stopped the war for the Japanese but in no way was it ever “the only option” or “the best option”. They did it because they could.
