Modern Slavery

What is the essence of slavery?

I think the most fundamental motivation for slavery is the desire to have goods or services as cheaply as possible, without concern for the rights, dignity and well being of those producing them.

When people work to produce goods or services, they should be compensated enough that they do that work and give up the products willingly. They should not be forced to do the work without compensation or against their will and the products of their work should not be taken from them against their will.

This gives rise to the most morally objectionable aspect of slavery: taking away the liberty of others, to force them to do work against their will. This typically entails effective imprisonment, physical and emotional abuse and an almost complete lack of compensation for the work done, beyond the minimum necessary for the workers to survive to do the work, and sometimes not even that much.

Some few people might find pleasure in abusing others but the vast majority who benefit from slavery do it merely for the benefit of having goods or services at a lower cost than possible when they are produced by people living freely, with dignity, health and security, and producing them willingly, for compensation.

Of course, everyone wants more for less. It is a natural desire. What separates those benefiting from slavery is the willingness to ignore the abuse of others.

One might be more or less removed from the direct abuse of others. One might be directly involved in the physical coercion of them to work. Or one might trade with people who are. Or with people who trade with people who are. Or ever more removed. But if, ultimately, the goods or services are produced, in whole or in part, by people who are coerced to work against their will and without reasonable compensation, then one is benefiting from and therefore participating in slavery.

Our society is structured to obscure the existence of slavery and its contribution to the goods and services that are available. Long supply chains obscure the ultimate sources, more of less deliberately. This allows people who would not knowingly participate in slavery to benefit from it. And this motivates efforts to expose slavery, so that others might choose not to participate in it.

Beyond merely exposing slavery, there are laws to make slavery illegal. These take many forms. Some refer explicitly to slavery. Others bar the means of physical or emotional coercion essential to slavery. Laws restricting hours of work and setting minimum wages also contribute to the prevention of slavery, as do the many laws protecting basic human rights.

Theft is typically treated as something distinct and different from slavery. Slavery is forcing someone to do work and taking the products of that forced work without compensation. Theft doesn't entail forcing someone to do work, merely taking the products of work after the fact, without forcing the work. But the end result is very similar: people work and the product of their work is taken from them against their will, without the compensation that would make them do the work and give up the products willingly.

It seems to me that theft is just a more subtle and devious means of slavery. It avoids some of the physical and emotional coercion, which is good to avoid, but it has all the other adverse consequences of slavery.

Thinking of theft and modern slavery, it seems to me that one of the biggest transfers of wealth in human history is the taking of almost all the artifacts of our culture for the training of LLMs, without compensation to the creators. This is deemed not to be theft, by those in power and benefiting from the transfer. But for the vast majority of creators, their products were taken against their will and without compensation: the essence of theft.

And as for coercion to work against ones will, one means to make others do this without direct physical coercion is to remove all alternatives. If one isn't allowed to raise or grow food and there are no stores except the company store, one will buy food at the company store, regardless of the price. Even if that makes one perpetually indebted to the company. The force, in this case, isn't up front as in traditional slavery, but it comes later, if one tries to stop working and leave the company town without paying off the debt: then law enforcement intervenes. So it isn't physical coercion that leads to slavery, but rather the threat of physical coercion: just one slight step removed. Like theft, this avoids the direct use of physical coercion that is the essence of slavery, but has all the other immoral consequences.

The so-called 'AI' industry entails two aspects of slavery: theft of the products of work, without compensation to the workers; and removal of any alternative but to work in conditions equivalent to slavery, by way of unfair competition. The industry is giving away the outputs of the LLM systems at far below cost, in order to compete with real people working productively and creatively, leaving them no alternative but to work in abject poverty to gain a few scraps of food.

It surprises me, therefore, that there isn't more vocal opposition to the 'AI' industry from those advocating against modern slavery. It is a morally repugnant abuse of human rights, morality and basic dignity, in progress at a massive scale, and should be opposed.

It is less direct that a sweatshop with imprisoned slaves, but it is so pervasive that it is almost inescapable. And, thus far, there is very little attention to the immorality of it. Not no attention, but not nearly enough. Many people discuss LLMs and so-called 'AI' merely on the basis of effectiveness as a tools for producing an immediate result in comparison with other means of producing the same result,  without consideration of its broader effects on people, society and the environment: without consideration of the theft of the products of people's work without compensation or the elimination of alternatives to working in slave-like conditions.