I think you might be right that Greaves is too strong on this and I’ll admit I’m still quite uncertain about exactly how cluelessness cashes out. However, I know I have difficulties funding GHD work (and would even if there was nothing else to fund), but that I don’t have similar difficulties for certain longtermist interventions. I’ll try to explain.
I don’t want to fund GHD work because it’s just very plausible that the animal suffering might outweigh the human benefit. Some have called for development economists to consider the welfare of non-human animals. Despite this, GiveWell hasn’t yet done this (I’m not criticising—I know it’s tricky). I think it’s possible for a detailed analysis to make me happy to give to GHD interventions (over burning the money), but we aren’t there yet.
On the other hand, there are certain interventions that either:
Have no plausible foreseeable downsides, or
For which I am pretty confident the upsides outweigh the downsides in expectation.
For example:
Technical AI alignment research / AI governance and coordination research: I struggle to come up with a story why this might be bad. Maybe the story is that it would slow down progress and delay benefits from AI, but the typical Bostrom astronomical waste argument combined with genuine concerns about AI safety from experts debunks this story for me. I am left feeling pretty confident that funding technical AI alignment research is net positive in expectation.
Expanding our moral circle: Again, I just struggle to come up with a story why this might be bad. Of course, poor advocacy can be counterproductive which means we should be careful and not overly dogmatic/annoying. Spreading the ideas and advocating in a careful, thoughtful manner just seems robustly positive to me. Upsides seem very large given risks of lock-in of negative outcomes for non-humans (e.g. non-human animals or digital sentience).
Some other interventions I don’t think I’m clueless about include:
Global priorities research
Growing EA/longtermism (I could be convinced it’s bad to try to grow EA given recent negative publicity)
I have no particular reason to think you shouldn’t believe in any of those claims, but fwiw I find it quite plausible (though wouldn’t care to give particular credences atm) that at least some of them could be bad, eg:
Technical AI safety seems to have been the impetus for various organisations who are working on AI capabilities in a way that everyone except them seems to think is net negative (OpenAI, Deepmind, Anthropic, maybe others). Also, if humans end up successfully limiting AI by our own preferences, that could end up being a moral catastrophe all of its own.
‘Expanding our moral circle’ sounds nice, but without a clear definition of the morality involved it’s pretty vague what it means—and with such a definition, it could cash out as ‘make people believe our moral views’, which doesn’t have a great history.
Investing for the future could put a great deal of undemocratic power into the hands of a small group of people whose values could shift (or turn out to be ‘wrong’) over time.
And all of these interventions just cost a lot of money, something which the EA movement seems very short on recently.
I don’t buy the argument that AI safety is in some way responsible for dangerous AI capabilities. Even if the concept of AI safety had never been raised I’m pretty sure we would still have had AI orgs pop up.
Also yes it is possible that working on AI Safety could limit AI and be a catastrophe in terms of lost welfare, but I still think AI safety work is net positive in expectation given the Bostrom astronomical waste argument and genuine concerns about AI risk from experts.
The key point here is that cluelessness doesn’t arise just because we can think of ways an intervention could be both good and bad—it arises when we really struggle to weigh these competing effects. In the case of AI safety, I don’t struggle to weigh them.
Expanding moral circle for me would be expanding to anything that is sentient or has the capacity for welfare.
As for investing for the future, you can probably mitigate those risks. Again though my point stands that, even if that is a legitimate worry, I can try to weigh that risk against the benefit. I personally feel fine in determining that, overall, investing funds for future use that are ‘promised for altruistic purposes’ seems net positive in expectation. We can debate that point of course, but that’s my assessment.
I think at this point we can amicably disagree, though I’m curious why you think the ‘more people = more animals exploited’ philosophy applies to people in Africa, but not in the future. One might hope that we learn to do better, but it seems like that hope could be applied to and criticised in either scenario.
I do worry about future animal suffering. It’s partly for that reason that I’m less concerned about reducing risks of extinction than I am about reducing other existential risks that will result in large amounts of suffering in the future. This informed some of my choices of interventions for which I am ‘not clueless about’. E.g.
Technical AI alignment / AI governance and coordination research: it has been suggested that misaligned AI could be a significant s-risk.
Expanding our moral circle: relevance to future suffering should be obvious.
Global priorities research: this just seems robustly good as how can increasing moral understanding be bad?
Research into consciousness: seems really important in light of the potential risk of future digital minds suffering.
Research into improving mental health: improving mental health has intrinsic worth and I don’t see a clear link to increasing future suffering (in fact I lean towards thinking happier people/societies are less likely to act in morally outrageous ways).
I do lean towards thinking reducing extinction risk is net positive in expectation too, but I am quite uncertain about this and I don’t let it motivate my personal altruistic choices.
I think you might be right that Greaves is too strong on this and I’ll admit I’m still quite uncertain about exactly how cluelessness cashes out. However, I know I have difficulties funding GHD work (and would even if there was nothing else to fund), but that I don’t have similar difficulties for certain longtermist interventions. I’ll try to explain.
I don’t want to fund GHD work because it’s just very plausible that the animal suffering might outweigh the human benefit. Some have called for development economists to consider the welfare of non-human animals. Despite this, GiveWell hasn’t yet done this (I’m not criticising—I know it’s tricky). I think it’s possible for a detailed analysis to make me happy to give to GHD interventions (over burning the money), but we aren’t there yet.
On the other hand, there are certain interventions that either:
Have no plausible foreseeable downsides, or
For which I am pretty confident the upsides outweigh the downsides in expectation.
For example:
Technical AI alignment research / AI governance and coordination research: I struggle to come up with a story why this might be bad. Maybe the story is that it would slow down progress and delay benefits from AI, but the typical Bostrom astronomical waste argument combined with genuine concerns about AI safety from experts debunks this story for me. I am left feeling pretty confident that funding technical AI alignment research is net positive in expectation.
Expanding our moral circle: Again, I just struggle to come up with a story why this might be bad. Of course, poor advocacy can be counterproductive which means we should be careful and not overly dogmatic/annoying. Spreading the ideas and advocating in a careful, thoughtful manner just seems robustly positive to me. Upsides seem very large given risks of lock-in of negative outcomes for non-humans (e.g. non-human animals or digital sentience).
Some other interventions I don’t think I’m clueless about include:
Global priorities research
Growing EA/longtermism (I could be convinced it’s bad to try to grow EA given recent negative publicity)
Investing for the future
Research into consciousness
Research into improving mental health
I have no particular reason to think you shouldn’t believe in any of those claims, but fwiw I find it quite plausible (though wouldn’t care to give particular credences atm) that at least some of them could be bad, eg:
Technical AI safety seems to have been the impetus for various organisations who are working on AI capabilities in a way that everyone except them seems to think is net negative (OpenAI, Deepmind, Anthropic, maybe others). Also, if humans end up successfully limiting AI by our own preferences, that could end up being a moral catastrophe all of its own.
‘Expanding our moral circle’ sounds nice, but without a clear definition of the morality involved it’s pretty vague what it means—and with such a definition, it could cash out as ‘make people believe our moral views’, which doesn’t have a great history.
Investing for the future could put a great deal of undemocratic power into the hands of a small group of people whose values could shift (or turn out to be ‘wrong’) over time.
And all of these interventions just cost a lot of money, something which the EA movement seems very short on recently.
I don’t buy the argument that AI safety is in some way responsible for dangerous AI capabilities. Even if the concept of AI safety had never been raised I’m pretty sure we would still have had AI orgs pop up.
Also yes it is possible that working on AI Safety could limit AI and be a catastrophe in terms of lost welfare, but I still think AI safety work is net positive in expectation given the Bostrom astronomical waste argument and genuine concerns about AI risk from experts.
The key point here is that cluelessness doesn’t arise just because we can think of ways an intervention could be both good and bad—it arises when we really struggle to weigh these competing effects. In the case of AI safety, I don’t struggle to weigh them.
Expanding moral circle for me would be expanding to anything that is sentient or has the capacity for welfare.
As for investing for the future, you can probably mitigate those risks. Again though my point stands that, even if that is a legitimate worry, I can try to weigh that risk against the benefit. I personally feel fine in determining that, overall, investing funds for future use that are ‘promised for altruistic purposes’ seems net positive in expectation. We can debate that point of course, but that’s my assessment.
I think at this point we can amicably disagree, though I’m curious why you think the ‘more people = more animals exploited’ philosophy applies to people in Africa, but not in the future. One might hope that we learn to do better, but it seems like that hope could be applied to and criticised in either scenario.
I do worry about future animal suffering. It’s partly for that reason that I’m less concerned about reducing risks of extinction than I am about reducing other existential risks that will result in large amounts of suffering in the future. This informed some of my choices of interventions for which I am ‘not clueless about’. E.g.
Technical AI alignment / AI governance and coordination research: it has been suggested that misaligned AI could be a significant s-risk.
Expanding our moral circle: relevance to future suffering should be obvious.
Global priorities research: this just seems robustly good as how can increasing moral understanding be bad?
Research into consciousness: seems really important in light of the potential risk of future digital minds suffering.
Research into improving mental health: improving mental health has intrinsic worth and I don’t see a clear link to increasing future suffering (in fact I lean towards thinking happier people/societies are less likely to act in morally outrageous ways).
I do lean towards thinking reducing extinction risk is net positive in expectation too, but I am quite uncertain about this and I don’t let it motivate my personal altruistic choices.