> Just because someone else might be willing to do it isn't a reason to continue doing it.
Hence, someone filling the position after you leave isn't a reason to continue doing it, whereas the fact that it's an immoral thing to do is a reason to stop doing it.
Someone filling the position after you leave has no bearing on the reasons that are relevant to what you ought to do here. It's like deciding to not buy a ticket to see a movie because someone else is going to buy the ticket anyways even if you don't purchase the ticket. It has no relevance to whether you should watch the movie or not, just as someone else taking the job has no relevance to whether you ought to do the job.
This is carrying a lot of weight. What makes working on frontier models "immoral"? Because there is potential for misuse? Would you also say working at a knife factory is immoral? Or even at a nuclear or biological pathogens research lab? After all those too can be misused.
And if one does suspect a workplace is moving in a bad direction, and there's no immediate danger to them, is leaving and then talking about it really the responsible move? Like if you're on your way to meet friends late one evening and you see a small child alone and crying in an alleyway and a bunch of sleazy-looking guys hanging around, do you continue on to your meeting where you then tell your friends about the crying child you passed in an alley and what those guys may or may not do to the child?
Well we're not debating the morality of it, the question is what he should do, given that he believes that it's immoral.
In your analogy the correct thing to do would be to call the authorities to help. The problem with the analogy is that there isn't a 911 number to call for this scenario. You need to appeal to the people who have the power to do something about the situation. Quitting in a very public way is one way to get someone with that authority to do something about it. I don't really see a better alternative.
By the time authorities get there, if they actually prioritize it (police in many places already have a track record for not being very responsive, unless there're actual signs of a crime), something may have already happened to the child. You don't know because you already left, expecting that someone else will take care of it, when you were already in a position to help ensure that child's safety. No, if you think something might be wrong you stay and monitor the situation best you can, so if something really does begin to actually begin to happen you can be a buffer and/or whistleblow.
At this point the analogy has entirely collapsed, your job is to develop AI. Unless you're advocating for some kind of sabotage or something, I'm not sure what you're really suggesting he do. If he continues to do the work he's directly contributing to the problem and harm that it you see it to be causing. Nothing is going to change if you continue working there business as usual. It's by drawing a line in the sand and refusing to take part in the problem that you're actually doing something about it, not by compromising your morals.
We have a pretty famous example, someone who's actions actually led to change: Edward Snowden. He didn't quit prematurely, crying to whoever would listen that he thought the US had a massive ongoing surveillance program. He actually stayed in the system which he was growing suspicious of, until he actually had proof of shenanigans and then he got as much of that proof as he could out before leaving.
Currently what we have with these people publicly quitting because "immoral things are happening" at AI labs are essentially crying wolf, and if/when something really worth taking action on does come up, it's pretty likely that many will be too jaded to care and as such there will be no/too little action.
He did that because what they were doing was illegal and there was a whistle blower program he could use to confront the issue, legally. That doesn't apply here. Not clear what you're suggesting he does differently.
Some of it was illegal. Most of it was permissible or grey zoned. There was no whistleblower program he could've used that would've led to anything more than sources getting shut down and the matter getting swept under a carpet. Nothing allowed for public disclosure, and without that there'd be little to no change. And no, it doesn't apply here because this is just someone crying wolf; there is no evidence that they can bring forth to support their claim of danger because they vacated a position that could've allowed them access to that evidence if there were to be any.
Okay, so your argument is that he should disclose trade secrets/confidential information and face both civil and criminal litigation and ruin his life like Edward Snowden? Before your argument was that it doesn't matter if he quits because someone else will just replace his job. This doesn't seem like a reasonable sacrifice to demand of someone, especially given the prior argument.
The original point I was making is that the fact that someone else will take the job is not a reason to keep doing that job which you view as immoral. I guess he could go full whistleblower, but I don't really feel like that's a fair standard to have of people - that takes a lot of courage and is usually quite rare. I think it's fully legitimate to quit a job you disagree with on moral grounds. I can understand that people don't want to risk being sued by a rich and powerful corporation for leaking confidential information to the public, so bringing evidence to light can be hard to do. I can also understand criticizing him for this, but I don't think most people would even forgo the paycheck in the first place for their morals, so the bar is pretty low for me.
> Just because someone else might be willing to do it isn't a reason to continue doing it.
Hence, someone filling the position after you leave isn't a reason to continue doing it, whereas the fact that it's an immoral thing to do is a reason to stop doing it.
Someone filling the position after you leave has no bearing on the reasons that are relevant to what you ought to do here. It's like deciding to not buy a ticket to see a movie because someone else is going to buy the ticket anyways even if you don't purchase the ticket. It has no relevance to whether you should watch the movie or not, just as someone else taking the job has no relevance to whether you ought to do the job.