Aiding the enemy

Should we be helping AI replace us?

The obvious answer is no. So why are people doing it anyway?

It’s bad enough that billionaires and corporations are developing artificial intelligence as quickly as they can. Those guys — remember, corporations are people who can speak and purchase politicians — don’t have to worry about jobs.

But why would anyone who could be replaced train their computer replacement?

I bring this up because I got a message via LinkedIn the other day from something called Outlier saying it was inviting “brilliant minds like you” to earn up to $1.6K a month designing “challenging legal problems AI can’t solve” and learning where AI models break “and how to fix them.”

My brilliant mind immediately wondered if this was a good idea. At first, I thought it wasn’t. It seemed like designing a bomb for an enemy country.

For that matter, why would LinkedIn, which is supposed to be helping people get jobs, host such a thing? It seemed suicidal.

And then I had a brilliant, probably evil, thought. What if instead of training AI to do your job, you trained it to screw up your job? Imagine thousands of Outlier contributors messing with AI’s mind.

I’m not suggesting sabotage here. But we’re only human. We make lots of mistakes. This is a chance for AI to learn to be just like us.

And get fired.

Stereotypes

You’d think it would be obvious that characterizing an entire segment of the population as good or bad makes no sense. It’s racist and promotes hate.

We’ve had more than enough of that.

So imagine my dismay the other day when I ran across a post in the Law School Subreddit with this headline: “You all are so smart but suck so bad.”

Among other things, the author said “the average law student at a top school can best be described as transactional, spastic and arrogant. … My take is that most of you are deeply incomplete as people, but you don’t care or don’t know because you go to law school, and society rides your dick for that.”

That last part was not an image I wanted to carry about in my head and, oops, now I’ve shared it with you. Sorry about that.

This, of course, is the sort of law-studentism that leads to repression and social unrest. This is why we have so many lawyer jokes.

When I read this post not long after it appeared there were already 190 comments. Heroically, the law student community was not going to take this abuse. You’ll enjoy reading the reactions.

Some of my favorites:

“Thinking you’re better than all the other law students is peak law student behavior tbh.”

It makes sense that you can be racist about racists.

“My class and the other classes at my school are actually filled with so many people who are legitmatelt (sic) kind and caring. It’s actually been really nice to be part of a community where everybody proactively takes steps to look out for one another. Is this not how most law schools are?”

Hmm. No one seems to have answered that question.

“You sound exceptionally insufferable in a community full of insufferable people.”

I have no idea whether that person was agreeing or disagreeing.

“’spastic’? please elaborate on what you mean by this”

I was wondering about that too. This may explain why law schools don’t have basketball teams.

“I’ll say this — my husband and I went to two different schools in this bracket and his school was 80% insufferable people and mine was about 10% insufferable.”

Or this might say something about you and your husband. Somebody needs to check in on this marriage in a couple of years.

Disturbing legal news headline of the week

“Californians can now shoot swans year-round without a license.”

The fight against bureaucracy and red tape continues.

The news story, by the way, ends with swan cooking tips. This is informative journalism at its best.