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.
If it's not obvious that you're working on bad things, but the company is obviously doing broadly bad things, consistently, just refuse to work at all until those change. E.g. if at Anthropic or OpenAI, refuse to work until training runs stop
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 thisbecause 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 Kokotajlo 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.
someone who does not yet work for OpenAI should get hired by OpenAI, and from day one, refuse to do work that they think is harmful?
Modulo the other premises, this seems obviously true? The Achilles Heel of unethical orgs is their trouble recruiting and retaining workers in general and white-collar talent in particular. I'm constantly surprised by how e.g. people who hate the Troubled Teen industry don't gum up the recruitment pipeline by getting jobs in it and then immediately quitting (except very occasionally as a means to doing investigative journalism).
Like, to be clear, this seems like such an overdeterminedly good and asymmetric strategy that I take the fact I've never heard of anyone doing it as strong evidence there's something I'm not seeing. But I'd sure like to know what that something is!
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.
If it's not obvious that you're working on bad things, but the company is obviously doing broadly bad things, consistently, just refuse to work at all until those change. E.g. if at Anthropic or OpenAI, refuse to work until training runs stop
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 Kokotajlo 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.