That is exactly why the term is being used.

A company like Amazon doesn't treat its warehouse workers as human beings. Workers are seen as disposable: forced to piss in bottles, forced to work around the corpses of their collapsed coworkers, paid the absolute minimum possible, and replaced the second they don't operate like a perfect unfailing machine. You aren't viewed like a human, you are a tool. Cattle. A piece of meat they are forced to retain because a robot isn't quite capable of doing your task yet.

The article's use of "meat shields" isn't any different. Humans are going to be hired for the sole reason of taking accountability for actions dictated by AI. They are there only because the company can't put blame on a machine and will be sued to oblivion if there's nobody to blame at all. Your existence as a person is irrelevant, they are just interested in someone with a heartbeat they can blame when stuff inevitably goes wrong.

> someone with a heartbeat they can blame when stuff inevitably goes wrong.

if said person can be blamed (and take on the liability), but cannot stop the action or audit the action, take preventative measures (which costs money) etc, then they cannot take responsibility for real and thus whether the blame falls on them on paper is irrelevant - if there's real punishment (like jail time), but no real power to enforce anything, then who would be stupid enough to take on this job? If there's no real punishment, then what does it matter that the blame on paper is there?

Someone who needs to feed their family given that AI CEOs predicting that their technology will either destroy the world, take everyone's jobs or both.

There are several historical examples of this sort of job, and plenty of people who took them. For example, plenty of "editors in name only" of publications when the German government got really interested in censoring press in the 18th century.

That's hilarious given that this entire site here is using the term unironically to refer to people in general, good stuff

In the article, Ctrl+F for "meat" returns 3 results, while "human" returns 8. Seems like "human" remains the dominant word of choice in this author's vernacular.

Edit: Further, the only times "meat" appears is in the phrase "meat shield", which is an analogy that is very apt relative to the crux of the article.

Edit 2: "People" appears 13 times!

humans are made of meat -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47688678

"meatshield" has the correct connotations for that sort of work.

Sure. Would you like WWII, medieval-era Christianity, or Khanate Asia?

stone age gets a vote from me!

Meat pupeteering, has nothing to do with Jeffrey just state of slowly getting pushed into doing 95% of devwork with Agents.

What are you talking about, the only use of meat is in "Meat Shield", a phrase that's been around a long time now.

There has always been a subset of highly technical people in the software world who are anti-organic. They dislike the "meatspace" and humans and relate more with machines and software.

The internet was a mistake anyway, they should just ban it completely and be done with it.

I really appreciate this series of posts, as it serves as a good summary of key points of the discourse around AIs, and links to the relevant articles etc. I find following all those discussions myself exhausting, so if I can find this all in one place and read it nicely grouped, that is very helpful.

Personally as a lover of public libraries, which to me have always been places to discover old and new books in a quiet atmosphere, this change of the "library" to some sort of community center is rather annoying. You usually end up with a minimum viable amount of books, all the interesting stuff hidden away in a magazine, so that you can't browse and discover yourself, and a high level of noise and distraction everywhere. I'm not against creating such community spaces at all, but please keep the library alive and open and separate from those very different activities.

Yeah I share your sentiment, but spaces like this might be what’s needed to expose the next generation to books.

LLM or not, this is just terrible kitsch.

Which is also a good filter for web searches to exclude a lot of garbage results (if the specific search makes sense for non-recent results)

Except many search engines have a recency bias.

A sane default previously; as news changes and the status quo also, but it makes you even more likely to encounter slop now.

Not sure how that changes the fact that you can filter by date range in searches where you don't actually need anything recent?

This whole mission was amazing, and the most positive and hopeful thing I have seen as a global event in the last 5 years at least. Bravo and cheers to everyone involved :)

So which side is fighting for our values?

I am siding with the group that opens bananas from the bottom.

Which side is the bottom?

Hey everyone! I found a sideless one over here! Get 'em!!

>Which side is the bottom?

i'll tell you this if it helps, for the cohort he wishes to join he meant to say top.

Are you saying this was a case of top-whistling?

That depends on which side of "our values" you are talking about.

Are you orange team or green team?

This got me thinking. Do chimpanzees try and mate with pre pubescent young or is that somehow nature gated?

Apparently Bonobos regularly have sexual relations with infants.

negotiations on petrol rights still ongoing.

The Western Ngogo are clearly trying to spread the values of democracy and equality to the backwards Central Ngogo society that also happens to also have resources important to the Western Ngogo

Central Ngogo has complained that every time it's tried to democratically elect a leader, that leader had been overthrown by Western Ngogo—creating an environment that is hostile to anyone other than WN having a so-called "democracy". CN has also criticized WN as ultimately just being "oligarchy with extra steps" and creating an empire that requires the subjugation of CN.

A slightly more controversial, but equally effective solution would be to glue an angry toddler to your handlebar.

This. For those more into reading instead of straight to therapy, Barbara Sher's "Refuse to Choose!" book about living with a multitude of interests can be a good starting point.

Also, making (or maybe tuning) a chess engine to teaching sounds like an interesting challenge, actually.