But longtermism doesn’t necessarily include AI safety, since many advocates of AI safety are not longtermists. If you think there’s a 50%+ chance of superintelligence within a decade and a 5%+ chance of human extinction if superintelligence is created, you don’t have to be concerned at all with anything that might happen 1,000+ years from now to treat that as an urgent priority.
In 2021, Will MacAskill, who coined the term longtermism, defined longtermism like this:
Longtermism is the view that positively influencing the longterm future is a key moral priority of our time.
In the introduction to the 2025 anthology Essays on Longtermism, Hillary Greaves, Jacob Barrett, and David Thorstad cite that definition from Will MacAskill. They also characterize longtermism like this:
A cluster of ideas going under the label ‘longtermism’ hold that considerations of the far future—on timescales of thousands, millions, or even billions of years—are highly significant for today’s decision-making.
Not all AI safety advocates are longtermists. Some are concerned with what will happen within the next 100 years and don’t really think or care that much about the future 1,000+ years from now.
To accurately break down the EA 1.0 vs. EA 2.0 distinction by cause area, it would have to be something convoluted like: global health and development + animal welfare vs. AI safety + longtermism.
EA 1.0 vs EA 2.0 is worse terminology than GHD vs longtermism. GHD and longtermism is more descriptive, and therefore less likely to confuse folks.
But longtermism doesn’t necessarily include AI safety, since many advocates of AI safety are not longtermists. If you think there’s a 50%+ chance of superintelligence within a decade and a 5%+ chance of human extinction if superintelligence is created, you don’t have to be concerned at all with anything that might happen 1,000+ years from now to treat that as an urgent priority.
In 2021, Will MacAskill, who coined the term longtermism, defined longtermism like this:
In the introduction to the 2025 anthology Essays on Longtermism, Hillary Greaves, Jacob Barrett, and David Thorstad cite that definition from Will MacAskill. They also characterize longtermism like this:
Not all AI safety advocates are longtermists. Some are concerned with what will happen within the next 100 years and don’t really think or care that much about the future 1,000+ years from now.
To accurately break down the EA 1.0 vs. EA 2.0 distinction by cause area, it would have to be something convoluted like: global health and development + animal welfare vs. AI safety + longtermism.