I have long suspected that EA organizations in other cause areas have been put to higher standards of evaluation while getting funding (I am mainly referring to EA ones, but not only) than AI safety. I think I have slightly updated upward on the likeliness of this view being right after reading this post.
More information on the comparison I am suspecting and updating, using EA animal welfare organizations as example as I had some experience in this cause area. My suspicion is that, relative to AI safety grants animal welfare organizations receive much more scrutiny on their track records, experience of staff, work culture, etc.
Also, my observation is that in animal welfare organizations efforts to try to pay more sustainable and competitive salaries (from what are quite low levels and huge relative pay-cuts) to staff is not particularly welcome by all donors. (to be fair to the donors, some EA animal welfare organizations paying very low salaries is due to their management who refuse to pay higher). I am therefore puzzled why this kind of pressure doesn’t seem to exist as much in some other EA cause areas (and why it has to exist, in its current extent, in EA animal welfare). Granted, an underlying reason AI safety organizations pay high salaries is because the salaries people who can work in AI safety organizations can get in for profits are high(er) and they are already having huge pay-cuts to work in non-profit AI safety organizations. But it does seem to me judging from the salary levels said in this post Redwood might be experiencing much less pressure to suppress salary levels, comparatively. Also notice that they also earn significantly more than their peers who work in academia, which is something that isn’t generally seen in EA animal welfare.
I think I am not the only one having this kind of suspicion. At least 5 people from EA animal welfare have expressed to me their concerns, even complaints, that non-longtermist organizations are being treated unfairly relative to longtermist organizations, especially AI safety ones. According to my observation and I hope I am wrong, there seems to be some anti-longtermism/anti—AI safety sentiment flowing around in the animal welfare cause. I think this might be causing some community building problems within EA and maybe worth addressing.
(Fwiw I endorse some form of longtermism and I see a connection between animal welfare and longtermism. I now work on AI’s impact on animals)
I find salary pretty confusing. My current guess is that EAs are too willing to flatten salary across different counterfactuals and experience levels, rather than too unwilling. In particular, one intuitive heuristic in my head is something like “many people are willing to give up 20-50% of salary to do the right thing, but relatively few people are willing to give up >>70%.”
Maybe this is wrong? I know there’s empirical research that people with more money benefit less from percentage increases in their spending, so I can see why e.g. someone with a 50k salary taking a 25% paycut is similarly (or more!) costly to someone with a 300k salary taking a 70% paycut. But it’s not very intuitive to me, and I’m confused why this point is not more often brought up when discussing questions of salary fairness.
Thank you for the post!
I have long suspected that EA organizations in other cause areas have been put to higher standards of evaluation while getting funding (I am mainly referring to EA ones, but not only) than AI safety. I think I have slightly updated upward on the likeliness of this view being right after reading this post.
More information on the comparison I am suspecting and updating, using EA animal welfare organizations as example as I had some experience in this cause area. My suspicion is that, relative to AI safety grants animal welfare organizations receive much more scrutiny on their track records, experience of staff, work culture, etc.
Also, my observation is that in animal welfare organizations efforts to try to pay more sustainable and competitive salaries (from what are quite low levels and huge relative pay-cuts) to staff is not particularly welcome by all donors. (to be fair to the donors, some EA animal welfare organizations paying very low salaries is due to their management who refuse to pay higher). I am therefore puzzled why this kind of pressure doesn’t seem to exist as much in some other EA cause areas (and why it has to exist, in its current extent, in EA animal welfare). Granted, an underlying reason AI safety organizations pay high salaries is because the salaries people who can work in AI safety organizations can get in for profits are high(er) and they are already having huge pay-cuts to work in non-profit AI safety organizations. But it does seem to me judging from the salary levels said in this post Redwood might be experiencing much less pressure to suppress salary levels, comparatively. Also notice that they also earn significantly more than their peers who work in academia, which is something that isn’t generally seen in EA animal welfare.
I think I am not the only one having this kind of suspicion. At least 5 people from EA animal welfare have expressed to me their concerns, even complaints, that non-longtermist organizations are being treated unfairly relative to longtermist organizations, especially AI safety ones. According to my observation and I hope I am wrong, there seems to be some anti-longtermism/anti—AI safety sentiment flowing around in the animal welfare cause. I think this might be causing some community building problems within EA and maybe worth addressing. (Fwiw I endorse some form of longtermism and I see a connection between animal welfare and longtermism. I now work on AI’s impact on animals)
I find salary pretty confusing. My current guess is that EAs are too willing to flatten salary across different counterfactuals and experience levels, rather than too unwilling. In particular, one intuitive heuristic in my head is something like “many people are willing to give up 20-50% of salary to do the right thing, but relatively few people are willing to give up >>70%.”
Maybe this is wrong? I know there’s empirical research that people with more money benefit less from percentage increases in their spending, so I can see why e.g. someone with a 50k salary taking a 25% paycut is similarly (or more!) costly to someone with a 300k salary taking a 70% paycut. But it’s not very intuitive to me, and I’m confused why this point is not more often brought up when discussing questions of salary fairness.