I think I feel less convinced than you that scaling most these are going to end up resulting in meaningful positive impact for more animals — the exception is welfare technology, which I’m quite excited about, but my impression is that the good opportunities here are pretty fundable right now.
To be clear, I also don’t think loads of money should go into neglected animals either (though on the margin I’m more excited about things here than FAW) — I think there is a lot more potential for helping animals in wild animal and invertebrate welfare, but there aren’t ways to absorb tons (e.g. tens of millions of dollars) of funding there either (at least not yet).
I generally in both cases am excited by a smaller, more highly coordinated and strategic movement (or set of movements) than a larger one, but I think more funding right now would be used primarily to try to make a bigger one. I’m guessing this is a lot of the crux between us. But, I also know that I’m a bit on my own island with these views at times, and am genuinely pro-pluralism in the space. So I appreciate you pushing on it so hard!
I think AI safety mostly can’t absorb new funding that effectively, except for political things (which maybe are complicated due to various backfire risks), but it also has a better track record so far than FAW which suggests it can use the money it has more effectively. But I’m not a partisan here really — at heart I’m an animal welfare person who mainly feels sad that it might be pretty hard to help more animals than we already are effectively.
I think I feel less convinced than you that scaling most these are going to end up resulting in meaningful positive impact for more animals — the exception is welfare technology, which I’m quite excited about, but my impression is that the good opportunities here are pretty fundable right now.
To be clear, I also don’t think loads of money should go into neglected animals either (though on the margin I’m more excited about things here than FAW) — I think there is a lot more potential for helping animals in wild animal and invertebrate welfare, but there aren’t ways to absorb tons (e.g. tens of millions of dollars) of funding there either (at least not yet).
I generally in both cases am excited by a smaller, more highly coordinated and strategic movement (or set of movements) than a larger one, but I think more funding right now would be used primarily to try to make a bigger one. I’m guessing this is a lot of the crux between us. But, I also know that I’m a bit on my own island with these views at times, and am genuinely pro-pluralism in the space. So I appreciate you pushing on it so hard!
I think AI safety mostly can’t absorb new funding that effectively, except for political things (which maybe are complicated due to various backfire risks), but it also has a better track record so far than FAW which suggests it can use the money it has more effectively. But I’m not a partisan here really — at heart I’m an animal welfare person who mainly feels sad that it might be pretty hard to help more animals than we already are effectively.