I don't think it's as easy as hand waving it away as "your competitor's labor". Your competitors labor is your community, it's people. I believe we all have an ethical responsibility to that.

For the points you brought up, why is stagnation for the purposes of upholding an ethical position a bad thing?

And yes, by definition, worrying about ethical responsibility would lead to ethical issues. That's the whole point.

So should we all be farming and collecting berries? Most advancements since have put people out of jobs in "competitors" that didn't adapt. Still the unemployment rate isn't 99.9%. Yet we displaced whole industries many times over the centuries. Obviously people move to better jobs and find other things to do. There's nothing particularly good about sitting on a computer denying people insurance all day, why not have a computer do it?

If it is a choice between progress unfettered by concern for your "competitor's labor" or farming berries, I choose berries.

However, I believe there's a middle ground and endeavor to find it. Based on your response it doesn't appear as though you believe a middle ground exists.

Choosing berries (ie not progressing to "protect jobs" - no jobs are protected, we have close to full employment worldwide) is choosing avoidable deaths. Child mortality rate in a "choose berries" world is just one example that makes me triggered by those that have that position.

And you get nothing in return for protecting those jobs, as I said, the world is "employed" and we've killed many industries already over the centuries. You're protecting nothing.

I believe in, and am searching for the middle ground. I am not interested in discussing hypothetical extremes. I do not believe they are relevant.

I think the middle ground is not being concerned about your competitor’s labor, to use my original phrasing.

You misread. The poster is speaking about the ethical handling of customer service.

This comment is replying to the sentiment:

> Completely separate from the potential ethical issues and economic implications of putting 100k people out of a job, […]

I’m pretty sure. Although, the original comment was basically putting that issue aside, so I’m not sure what there is to say about it.

You got that right, and yes, I was putting that issue aside, although my counterpoint to GGP argument would be "the ethical issues aren't from the competitor's perspective, it's from the perspective of the whole workforce, industry, and/or economy as a whole".

The impact to the whole workforce, industry and/or economy as a whole is a second order effect of the real ethical issue of providing a worse service for so cheap it's almost free such that the market won't bear significantly better service provided by humans. As I see it, the ethical concerns are not about specific people being out of a job, but with setting an expectation that it's not worth providing real, useful service (using actual people) because to do so would be a cost higher than phoning it in with AI.

I've had travel insurance from time to time and the consensus in online forums seems to be Allianz. But, in spite of anecdotal stories, relatively few people have any real world experience with the claims process. So it's really hard to tell what the true story is especially given that different people have different tolerances for out of pocket costs--especially below extreme amounts related to evacuation and the like.

The whole ugly turn of AI hypemen claiming its somehow morally okay for everyone to lose their jobs all at once makes me think the Luddites were right all along