I’ve written about this idea before FTX and think that FTX is a minor influence compared to the increased interest in AI risk.
My original reasoning was that AI safety is a separate field but doesn’t really have much movement building work being put into it outside of EA/longtermism/x-risk framed activities.
Another reason why AI takes up a lot of EA space, is that there aren’t many other places to go to discuss these topics, which is bad for the growth of AI safety if it’s hidden behind donating 10% and going vegan and bad for EA if it gets overcrowded by something that should have it’s own institutions/events/etc.
“Which is bad for the growth of AI safety if it’s hidden behind donating 10% and going vegan”
This may be true and the converse is also possible concurrently, with the growth of giving 10% and going vegan potentially being hidden at times behind AI safety ;)
From an optimistic angle “Big tent EA” and AI safety can be synergistic—much AI safety funding comes from within the EA community. A huge reason those hundreds of millions are available, is because the AI safety cause grew out of and is often melded with founding EA principles, which includes giving what we can to high EV causes. This has motivated people to provide the very money EA safety work relies on.
Community dynamics are complicated and I don’t think the answers are straightforward.
I’ve written about this idea before FTX and think that FTX is a minor influence compared to the increased interest in AI risk.
My original reasoning was that AI safety is a separate field but doesn’t really have much movement building work being put into it outside of EA/longtermism/x-risk framed activities.
Another reason why AI takes up a lot of EA space, is that there aren’t many other places to go to discuss these topics, which is bad for the growth of AI safety if it’s hidden behind donating 10% and going vegan and bad for EA if it gets overcrowded by something that should have it’s own institutions/events/etc.
“Which is bad for the growth of AI safety if it’s hidden behind donating 10% and going vegan”
This may be true and the converse is also possible concurrently, with the growth of giving 10% and going vegan potentially being hidden at times behind AI safety ;)
From an optimistic angle “Big tent EA” and AI safety can be synergistic—much AI safety funding comes from within the EA community. A huge reason those hundreds of millions are available, is because the AI safety cause grew out of and is often melded with founding EA principles, which includes giving what we can to high EV causes. This has motivated people to provide the very money EA safety work relies on.
Community dynamics are complicated and I don’t think the answers are straightforward.