It is also whether your comments will actually be shown to real actual people or just left flapping in the void. It is your engagement figures on youtube and how close you are to getting demonetized and deplatformed and dmca'd. Whether your email or phonecall will be answered by a real engineer or some heavily accented lowly paid script-reader from a third-world country or chatgpt or a dumb pre-ai voice recording telling you to hold the line forever.
Maybe one of the treadmills is how pleasant and agreeable your opinions are. How they make people feel. Maybe you should shut the hell up before you get yourself into trouble and drive up your premiums.
It's not a problem unique to AI researchers, it's about everything, if not now then ten years from now.
This is hidden metrics when you're getting a home loan, your insurance premiums, your success in dating sites, college admissions, whether somebody would hire you to do a dj gig at a nightclub, everything.
It's all recursive bullshit games, and you won't know which ones so you're just gonna run on as many treadmills as you can, all at once, while fully knowing some of them aren't even worth anything - just not which ones.
Maybe one of the treadmills is how pleasant and agreeable your opinions are. How they make people feel. Maybe you should shut the hell up before you get yourself into trouble and drive up your premiums.