I think the most likely explanation, particularly for people working at Anthropic is that EA has a lot of “takes” on AI, many of which they (for good or bad reasons) very strongly disagree with. This might fall into “brand confusion”, but I think some of it’s simply a point of disagreement. It’s probably accurate to characterise the AI safety wing of EA as generally regarding it as very important to debate whether AGI is safe to attempt to develop. Anthropic and their backers have obviously picked a side on that already.
I think that’s probably more important for them to disassociate from than FTX or individuals being problematic in other ways.
Personally, I think disagreements like this fit under the definition of brand confusion, at least as I intended it—if everyone understood that there were EAs who are debating AGI is safe, and others who have already made a decision on that, then someone who spent a lot of time reading about EA/talking about EA/being married to EA leadership wouldn’t feel as bad saying “Yeah, I’m EA” just because they disagreed with some other EAs.
I think the most likely explanation, particularly for people working at Anthropic is that EA has a lot of “takes” on AI, many of which they (for good or bad reasons) very strongly disagree with. This might fall into “brand confusion”, but I think some of it’s simply a point of disagreement. It’s probably accurate to characterise the AI safety wing of EA as generally regarding it as very important to debate whether AGI is safe to attempt to develop. Anthropic and their backers have obviously picked a side on that already.
I think that’s probably more important for them to disassociate from than FTX or individuals being problematic in other ways.
Personally, I think disagreements like this fit under the definition of brand confusion, at least as I intended it—if everyone understood that there were EAs who are debating AGI is safe, and others who have already made a decision on that, then someone who spent a lot of time reading about EA/talking about EA/being married to EA leadership wouldn’t feel as bad saying “Yeah, I’m EA” just because they disagreed with some other EAs.