I feel like the main reason to quit is because you think you can have more impact elsewhere (or can have a bunch of impact in the act of quitting). My guess is that in most cases, someone refusing to work on capabilities work would not be fired, but might be somewhat sidelined, wouldn't have that much influence, and be somewhat socially uncomfortable. The company is unlikely to make someone a safety martyr by firing them if they can just have a less useful employee around instead (and if said employee is doing safety work, that's typically pretty good from the company's perspective)
also, thanks to @Mateusz Bagiński, whose comment inspired me to finally write down most of these words
Yeah. I think this is good advice (though anyone following it should prepare themselves for a few stressful months: being pressured by management, becoming a rumor target, gaslit, accomplishments minimized etc). And your algorithmic liability plans are also really good. One of the few "rays of light" lately.
Saw the title and was about to disagree but
Just refuse to work on bad things and see if they fire you.
Yeah this is an underrated strategy. Refusing to work on bad things likely has an outsized effect on internal company culture.
My guess is that it would not be obvious for someone within the system which work tasks are "bad things." It's not obvious from the outside and my guess is that it'd be unobvious from the inside either.
Imagine for a second that one of the people on your team said "Mateusz, everyone else on the team, I'm not going to work on this because I think it's morally wrong".
Isn't it kind of important for the impact of this statement that the "on this" is also bolded?
If you say "I'm not going to work", you're in fact being very annoying, and not doing your job, and I sympathize with your boss for firing you for not doing your job.
If you say "I'm not going to work on this", then you are correspondingly more reasonable?
The experience of covid vaccine refusers was that forcing their employer to fire them or their apartment to evict them was a much more effective form of resistance than quitting or moving on their own.
Also, if you're an expert and you're in a job with a lot of discretion, when tasked to work on something you disagree with, just nod your head and go back to doing what you want to do.
Just refuse to work on bad things and see if they fire you. There's not much time left for resumes to matter. Also, firing someone for refusing to work on bad things is actually very costly.
Some, such as Mateusz may say: "They would fire you after a month or two and the firing wouldn't have the same social effect as voluntary quitting of, say, Daniel Kokotajlo or Richard Ngo."
I understand why it may feel that way, but I disagree very strongly, I predict it would have much more of a social effect.
"They fired him because he refused to help AI capabilities"
"They fired him because he didn't want to work on bad policies"
etc, much bigger headlines.
Also, I think you may not be factoring in the extent to which there is a cost to the company executives to be seen as firing someone. Especially someone who is refusing to work on moral grounds and has already proven themselves to be high status, respected, etc.
And especially how it would look to the other employees if they refused to even listen to the striking employee before firing them or refused to even negotiate at all.
The company leadership try to present themselves as very thoughtful, sincere, doing their best, etc. This is a large part of why many of the most talented people are there.
Imagine for a second that one of the people on your team said "Mateusz, everyone else on the team, I'm not going to work on this because I think it's morally wrong".
And then you fire them.
What would the other teammates think? What would they think of you? What would happen to their trust in you? What would happen to the trust that investors have in you? Or funders?
Obviously bad things. So obvious that you wouldn't even do it. You'd talk with them instead, see what could be changed, so that they feel better and this is less of a risk. So something would actually change in the company, to better reflect the employee's values, or you suffer a huge blow to your image and your employees trust in you.
And this would then mean that the other teammates know they can also do this.
Some may ask "would this give teammates courage or 'set an example'?". Even if it 'sets an example', it will do so in the short term, until the next moral outcry comes, where people get some courage again. And, more critically, they would much less believe in the nice things that the leadership say, the moral image they build.
And even better than quitting - there's a much, much lower chance of the protesting employee, who has moral courage, being replaced by one who has less moral courage.
Also, this is a much, much, much costlier signal. It's much harder to get funding to start a new lab, join Anthropic, etc, if you're known to be someone who might just stop working one day because you don't believe in it.
And this matters. People see that. Your colleagues see that. Journalists see that. Regular people see that.
Think of Daniel Kokotaloj refusing to sign the NDA and losing out on a lot of money because of it. It was a very very costly signal. And it's mattered and been trusted more because of that.
Refusing to work and taking on expensive cost and risk every day that you do so, is a much bigger cost and signal.