Ethics Is the Skill That Matters Most Now
agonora.com
agonora.com
Even if the models never get better than they are now, which is unlikely, they're already equipped to usurp taste, ethics, and everything else to a significant degree. Human feedback will always be valuable because we assign value to human feedback, but if you don't think an ethics-bot will ever be a thing, you're not seeing the current state of things.
You mean the people who are supposed to judge ethics are lazy like everyone else and also farm out their judgement to AI like everyone else.
This is like reading EU commission press releases about regulating AI and realizing there's "AI-isms" in the press releases. They're too short, and they were sloppy before AI could be involved, so I mostly suspect this, but ... who is writing AI regulations? ChatGPT is writing those.
Let's hope OpenAI/Anthropic doesn't realize too quickly that writing their political positions into the system prompt just like they're writing their legal positions into the system prompt. The famous example being that, no, Anthropic/OpenAI did nothing wrong illegally downloading and using millions of books.
"Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans."
I for one will value a similar guideline for submissions. Maybe we can have a poll. @dang.
[1]maybe an AI written article is fine if it is e.g. documentation for some new gadget.
I've seen HNers accuse content of being AI... that was written in the 2015-2017 era. So we seem to be rather poor judges of authenticity.
Two notes:
1. Whoever wrote this, add your name there. Otherwise it is a 0.2x credibility multiplier.
2. I like this topic a lot and would like to discuss it with others that also like it a lot. Reach out (email in my profile), let's make a small discussion group around this :).
Meta thought: Having recently learned of WeChat Groups in China, I'm now repeatedly noticing situations where familiar alternatives are higher friction.
Intelligence is being automated. Judgment is not.
judgement is being added, and its hard to tell exactly what judgement it is and whether you agree or not
Is it even possible? Different people do different judgements for the same things, there is no right or wrong really, just the choice you made in that moment, based on whatever you cared about at that point.
This is very much up for debate. I also would have liked your article to delve into whether thing’s that bring us humans joy actually need to be faster, and cheaper. Knowing why you do something crucially depends on knowing the thing being done. It’s very hard to cast an ethic judgement over a process you don’t understand. If your argument is that we need to be ethic stewards of machines but need to step aside the doing then your premise might lead you straight into tautology.
Some commentary:
1. Ethics is the practical science (in the broader classical sense, not the narrow empirical sense) of right action. But what determines right action? I'll make a stronger and more complete claim: it is the study of human nature, its ultimate end, and the principles that guide us there. Ethics is, therefore, about the principles that underpin the good life. Without its grounding in human nature, and without an end inherent to human nature, there is no ethics. An action's goodness can only be measured in relation to human nature and an end. Anything else is arbitrary and meaningless, hence the widespread and childish conviction that morality is just some set of made-up rules, or perhaps some otherworldly feeling of a gnostic variety. Ethics, morality, and virtue are not external things that we can sometimes appeal to and sometimes not. They concern our condition as human beings at all times and every single decision we make.
2. What the author is talking about when he calls ethics a skill is really personal morality and virtue. Am I a virtuous person? Do I do what I ought or do I habitually choose to do what I ought not to? Ethics helps us clarify our understanding of the underlying principles governing morality, but morality and virtue as such involve their concrete application. Prudence is nothing but the ability to discern what the right decision is here and now and in this situation. It is effectively the skill of applying general moral principles to particular circumstances.
3. A good society requires good members. As bad as collectivism is, this is one reason why libertarian hyper-individualism is also bogus. We are social animals. Our good is not sealed off from the good of society. Our personal immoralities don't just affect us; they affect the society we live in. We are our morality, as it were. If you're a crappy person, you drag the condition of society down. You have a moral duty to be good, and since you are a social animal, that also means you are obligated to be just and even charitable as prudence requires.
In short:
- Ethics is the scientific study of the good life and the end of the human person.
- Morality is the rational quality of our concrete, freely chosen actions.
- Virtue concerns the internal habits that give us the power to act rightly.
- Prudence (the first of the so-called "cardinal virtues") is the practical skill (the "art") of applying ethics to daily life.
If ethics mattered, the colonists wouldn't have taken America or slaves. If pre-existing laws mattered, America would have lost the revolutionary war (America legally belonged to the king). If ethics mattered, anyone who made money in cigarettes would be in prison. If ethics mattered, Zuckerberg and his cronies would be in prison.
If you had been concerned about ethics in the past, you would have failed to create America and failed to create Facebook, etc. In my moral framework, the worst (i.e. greediest, most selfish, anti-social) people have been winning over the last 20-40 years.
This dude needs to read some actual philosophy and then ponder it and write it himself, rather than using AI.
Yes, if we had considered ethics in the past, we wouldn't have committed bloody genocide on the Native Americans. We would probably have tried to open up mutually beneficial trade with them. (Sadly, we probably would still have caused the deaths of millions of them simply due to pathogens we didn't know we were carrying when we met them.) Do you think that would have made things worse now?
> In my moral framework, the worst (i.e. greediest, most selfish, anti-social) people have been winning over the last 20-40 years.
This sounds an awful lot like a "might makes right" attitude: "Sure, they're awful people, but they're winning, so we should adhere to their values!"
Deciding "what is worth doing" requires adjudicating values, and this does not have a mathematical solution.
The development of AI is a bit like giving everyone an atomic weapon, and few people have the ethics to use it responsibly (for some technologies, there does not even exist an ethical use).
The author suggests that the people who can tell "what's worth doing" (roughly, what's right) are the ones who will succeed in the coming era. I actually, unfortunately, think it's the opposite. The people who most ruthlessly steal and deploy AI for their own gains are likely to "succeed," where "succeed" is defined by accruing greater power. Those of us who are worried about doing what is right are likely to move more slowly and carefully and to thus "get left behind."
Society broadly cannot function without a shared set of morals (e.g. stealing sows discord which leads to anarchy, so we outlaw stealing). However, it can get quite complex and so there are infinitely many shades of grays. The base principal would still stand and you do your best to adhere to it in order to have a stable society.
I'm saying that if you're winning today (as measured in money/power), then by most objective notions of morality, you're probably a crappy, antisocial, person who is greedy and exploitative.
At some level it's almost definitional: if you share the material wealth you have, you'll never become that wealthy. If you don't consume a bunch of resources for the sake of your own consumption or to produce products that others consume, then you're also not going to make a lot of money.
So ya, it's a hard problem.
Sure, I can acknowledge that there may be values out there that are better than my values. That doesn't mean I have to say that people whose values are antithetical to mine—whose values are essentially "I can, should, and will take anything I want, no matter the cost to other people"—are just as good.
So as I said, a hard problem.
Also this sounds like it's talking about both designing those rules and also applying existing rules, without noticing much distinction between those aspects.
For applying existing rules, is there any reason that can't be mechanized aside from "the tools just aren't that capable yet"?
Designing the rules does have a "will this work as intended" component that can probably be machine-enhanced, but is largely about preferences / "should" questions.
That's not accurate. See e.g. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-theory/ section 1.2.1 "Morality and Ethics"
Unfortunately, most of my interest in this article was stifled by the LLM writing. All the wind left my sails when I realized that this website is trying to sell something. Content-wise this article is actually very forgettable. It essentially boils down to:
> Machines can't think, only you can think; and LLMS make bad actors way more powerful. This website will help you think (and stop you from becoming a sucker).
It's trying to sell self-improvement, to make those who are ethically inclined take an AI test. Either the "free" test means that your free-text responses are all being trained on/sold, or they plan to sell you "insights" on your "ethical profile". I'm not against making money; am I the only one who found this monetization a little insidious and manipulative?
Frankly, I'd rather not put my eggs in this LLM shaped basket. Rather I'm going to continue to think critically about myself, write my own self-diagnosis along with talking to friends and family. If I get really worried, I'll get therapy and I already volunteer at church regularly (insert your own way of giving back to the community). Self-reflection is important; if this tool does it for you, then go for it. I, for one, would much rather keep my "human-ness training" in the hands of humans.
The reason is that 99% of states are monarchies, and there is immense propaganda effort to make people believe that they in fact live in a democratic system.
Hollywood and the startup world enables nepo kids to lie to themselves and to the public about their "selfmade" status until they receive their ancestral Lordship from the King of England, and this fake meritocracy keeps everyone in line trying their best because one day you could be a billionaire, too.
It's a charade where your last name decides everything, even before you were born. But this is also the most peaceful and stable economic system humanity has come up with after horrors such as the crusades, the Holocaust and Rhodesia. It rewards achievements of many generations past no matter what modern ethics might think about those achievements, and it allows monarchs to peacefully blend in with the peasants.
With this in mind, the only thing a strive for "ethics" gives you is a spot on the weekly kill list.
What about the exceptions? Doesn't that disprove the theory? You mentioned Hollywood. There has been a lot of malaise the last few years that many of the new "stars" are just kids of existing famous actors. Hollywood is already a extremely tiny industry(Only about 6% of the actual LA economy).
Then comes along an independent movie like Obsession, breaks so many records and launching its star actress into an overnight rising star. This is a person who has no familial history in the industry and was walking dogs for a year and a half to pay rent because no roles were landing.
For every new star that suddenly "pops up everywhere" I recommend a journey through newspaper [0] and government archives based on their family names.
Here [1] you can check if the family has their own island, e.g. Trump island near Seattle/Canada with historic Swastika/KKK-shaped house that accidentally burnt down in 2019 or the other two Trump islands in Newfoundland (near Greenland).
Here [2] you can check if their family name was mentioned in US state department telegrams or as a government contractor ("Sweeney", "Graham").
Here you can check if their family name has its roots in Broadway [3], in Movies [4] or neither.
Bonus points if the family name is also the name of a country or a region ("Wales", "Holland", ...).
Of course there is always the official rags-to-riches story and the official CV and the curated Wikipedia page, plus the good old days where you could fake your SSN and travel with multiple passports, so be careful before accusing someone.
[0] https://www.newspapers.com (trial version)
[1] https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/searc...
[2] https://aad.archives.gov/aad/index.jsp
I mean you are welcome to prove me wrong but in my time during which I was interested in learning more about Inde Navarette, I have discovered a poorly curated Wikipedia article with minor incorrect info (she is not studying behavioral psychology) which seems to indicate minimal 'curation' and her family history is well documented as not coming from an entertainment background or wealth. This is despite going to #1 on the IMDB Star counter and her main social media platform(IG) going from what I suspect was ~200-300K followers to 3.5M in the course of ~two months.
You argument can be made about anyone but it goes into conspiracy theory.
Has there been a reduction in rags to riches stories, I would argue yes but one positive example in 2026 could disprove your original hypothesis.
The author's message would've landed if he demonstrated human authorship. Like this blog post [0] attaching a notebook page or my own [1] video proof.
But that kinda reminds me of the Chinese room thought experiment [1]. Is there anywhere in the latent space of the LLM a result that takes into account all these factors cited before? What kind of prompts or prompt orchestration would be necessary to achieve it? Would we still be able to tell the difference?
Is how Claude ends 90% of articles. So yes LLM slop.
This is a times problem, not a selection problem. The unipolar world order is ending, and everyone responds by turning inward and looking for strong leaders who will protect them against the rest.
In favor of this: US is having trouble projecting its desires onto others now. Its citizens are not in a good spot, hyper concentration of wealth and a growing distrust in the system.
Against this: China is suffering from a upcoming demographic implosion that they have no immediate solution for. This will lead to a slow in their growth, insane senior care obligations and a current youth unemployment of 25% will lead to long term limits on these peoples potential. What might seem like a rising power might actually be more of a paper tiger than the US, its just easier for them to hide it for now.
There is no "third" super power as everywhere else is much worse in some area (demographics, limited population, limited resources). I've said this before elsewhere but maybe the US just has to outlast China.