I won’t comment on who is right and who is wrong. That’s not what is relevant here in my opinion anyway. Rather the carelessness with which the money is used and the attitude behind, which gives ground to EA critics, and how could they be not wrong? If we trust the picture given by these people—luxurious salaries, luxurious retreats, carelessness about the money and romantic involvement with each other that leads to drama--, I’m ashamed to be an EA. The fact that no one comments on this worries me tremendously.
This situation disappoints me deeply, and it prompts reflection on what is EA in such circles, and what should be EA. It’s disheartening to witness the allocation of funds in a manner that seemingly deviates from the core values of this movement.
My concern extends beyond individual actions; what truly troubles me is the apparent lack of stewardship over financial resources. The discretion given to Chloé regarding her compensation, supposedly from funds “raised,” raises questions about accountability. Additionally, extravagant expenditures, like Ben’s $5000 for evaluating job applicants, appear starkly incongruent with the principles of effectiveness and impact that EA advocates.
This isn’t about adopting a holier-than-thou stance, but rather about upholding the fundamental tenets of EA. It’s disconcerting to see substantial financial resources being directed towards luxurious AI retreats, seemingly deviating from the ethos I initially embraced within EA.
Many within EA seek to make a meaningful difference through diligent, often challenging work—researching, striving for jobs aligned with their values, living modestly to contribute more to causes. EA, while predominantly associated with a specific demographic of rich white men in STEM (statistically that is what EA is, as the movement is around 90% white and 69% male) should not dismiss the struggles of those outside this stereotype.
The recent focus on Nonlinear feels like a departure from the altruistic essence of EA. It stands in stark contrast to the ethos set forth by McAskill’s example of allocating the majority of his income to charitable causes.
My concerns regarding Nonlinear’s operations in the Bahamas were met with a response emphasizing increased productivity without substantiated evidence. This lack of quantitative validation adds to the disillusionment surrounding the situation.
Something needs to be done. Many valuable people are exiting the movement because of shady allocations of funds—isn’t that funny to read these posts about which charity is the best, penny-close wise, while la crème de la crème does luxurious AI safety retreats? This isn’t a ‘one-time type of thing’, this is well-known. And yet nothing is done. I will sound Cromwellian, but we need morals and reality-check for people in power. Nothing surprising, but it needs to be repeated, again.
Oh, and I feel that this should be my signature: if you dislike my comment, why is that? So far I’ve received one comment nitpicking about how one AI safety retreat they know of is not luxury; aside from that, does anyone has anything to say about how poorly this reflects on EA? How a whole movement pays the PR price of the luxury lifestyle of a few? How this is plainly in contradiction with principles of effective altruism and nobody says anything because I assume the funder and the causes are hyped? I have a lot of respect for someone who funds something like Charity Entrepreneurship, it’s definitely one of the best things EA did. However the rest doesn’t speak in their favor and doesn’t justify this debauchery.
Tell me more about these “luxurious AI safety retreats”? I haven’t been to an AI safety workshop in several years, and wonder if something has changed. From searching the web, I found this:
I was there for an AI workshop earlier this year in Spring and stayed for 2 or 3 days, so let me tell you about the ‘luxury’ of the ‘EA castle’: it’s a big, empty, cold, stone box, with an awkward layout. (People kept getting lost trying to find the bathroom or a specific room.) Most of the furnishings were gone. Much of the layout you can see in Google Maps was nonfunctional, and several wings were off-limits or defunct, so in practice it was maybe a quarter of the size you’d expect from the Google Maps overview. There were clearly extensive needs for repair and remodeling of a lot of ancient construction, and most of the gardens are abandoned as too expensive to maintain. It is, as a real estate agent might say, very ‘historical’ and a ‘good fixer-upper’.
Can I suggest you make this a new top-level post and link to it here? It sounds like you’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think continued discussion would probably be better in its own post rather than here (although your original comment makes sense here for sure!)
Thanks for saying this. Sadly there is a lot of deference when it comes to AI safety and its questionable researchers, and while EA claims it loves criticism, I didn’t meet much love when raising my concerns.
In a group that is composed at 80% by rich white males who have a STEM background where AI safety allows them to get the recognition of their technical skills AND a huge pay, raising such concerns never goes well.
I’m actually preparing a series of post on the lack of diversity within AI and cultural biases will be part of it—how your critical thinking shuts down when it comes to doing work you love, and how evidence that existential risks should be prioritized falls apart under hard criticism (see David Thorsad’s criticism of Bostrom’s famous number 10^16). I expect much pushback and blind denial, as I can see with the comments under my own post that are pretty much just saying ‘AI researchers deserve to be paid well because ML is hard’. I have news: it’s far from unique to AI safety, sadly.
the comments under my own post that are pretty much just saying ‘AI researchers deserve to be paid well because ML is hard’
Which of the comments under your post do you read that way?
I understand the standard argument to be more like “AI researchers have commercial options that will pay them very highly, so it’s hard to get good AI researchers to work on altruistic projects if you offer too far below what they could be making elsewhere”.
Fellowships where you seek people with excellent machine learning skills should be well-paid to attract talent, especially given how much such people can make doing capacity research.
3000 per month for beginners in an AI fellowship is way, way too much.
We need to stop considering machine learning engineers as la crème de la crème and justify these exorbitant salaries based on that assumption. The tractability and impact measuring of the work of these people is highly questionable (the causality series written by RP rates existential risk research at 2 on a scale from 1 to 5, tractability-wise).
$3,000 a month in San Francisco is literally under minimum wage. Entry level salaries in data science in the US, for people fresh out of college or a boot camp program, is like $8,000 a month.
I should have specified: the fellowships I’m talking about are in London/Switzerland. Still expensive but nothing that justifies paying people with barely a bachelor degree and no work experience
sounds like it’s also below Zurich minimum wage (not totally sure if that minimum wage is currently in effect or not) and similar to the London “living wage” (which isn’t a required thing)
How much should a technical researcher be paid during an AI safety fellowship in your opinion? 3000 Euro per month does not sound like a lot to me.
(Actually, I think that many AI safety researchers are being paid a lot more than just 3000 Euro. My guess is that some at Anthropic might earn 6 times as much).
We’re talking fellows, so people with very little experience and no certainty of impact at all. You’re comparing this with fully-fledged Anthropic researchers, which doesn’t make sense at all.
And I could talk how these researchers at Anthropic are probably paid way too much for the tractability of their work, but I guess this asks for another post.
I won’t comment on who is right and who is wrong. That’s not what is relevant here in my opinion anyway. Rather the carelessness with which the money is used and the attitude behind, which gives ground to EA critics, and how could they be not wrong? If we trust the picture given by these people—luxurious salaries, luxurious retreats, carelessness about the money and romantic involvement with each other that leads to drama--, I’m ashamed to be an EA. The fact that no one comments on this worries me tremendously.
This situation disappoints me deeply, and it prompts reflection on what is EA in such circles, and what should be EA. It’s disheartening to witness the allocation of funds in a manner that seemingly deviates from the core values of this movement.
My concern extends beyond individual actions; what truly troubles me is the apparent lack of stewardship over financial resources. The discretion given to Chloé regarding her compensation, supposedly from funds “raised,” raises questions about accountability. Additionally, extravagant expenditures, like Ben’s $5000 for evaluating job applicants, appear starkly incongruent with the principles of effectiveness and impact that EA advocates.
This isn’t about adopting a holier-than-thou stance, but rather about upholding the fundamental tenets of EA. It’s disconcerting to see substantial financial resources being directed towards luxurious AI retreats, seemingly deviating from the ethos I initially embraced within EA.
Many within EA seek to make a meaningful difference through diligent, often challenging work—researching, striving for jobs aligned with their values, living modestly to contribute more to causes. EA, while predominantly associated with a specific demographic of rich white men in STEM (statistically that is what EA is, as the movement is around 90% white and 69% male) should not dismiss the struggles of those outside this stereotype.
The recent focus on Nonlinear feels like a departure from the altruistic essence of EA. It stands in stark contrast to the ethos set forth by McAskill’s example of allocating the majority of his income to charitable causes.
My concerns regarding Nonlinear’s operations in the Bahamas were met with a response emphasizing increased productivity without substantiated evidence. This lack of quantitative validation adds to the disillusionment surrounding the situation.
Something needs to be done. Many valuable people are exiting the movement because of shady allocations of funds—isn’t that funny to read these posts about which charity is the best, penny-close wise, while la crème de la crème does luxurious AI safety retreats? This isn’t a ‘one-time type of thing’, this is well-known. And yet nothing is done. I will sound Cromwellian, but we need morals and reality-check for people in power. Nothing surprising, but it needs to be repeated, again.
Oh, and I feel that this should be my signature: if you dislike my comment, why is that? So far I’ve received one comment nitpicking about how one AI safety retreat they know of is not luxury; aside from that, does anyone has anything to say about how poorly this reflects on EA? How a whole movement pays the PR price of the luxury lifestyle of a few? How this is plainly in contradiction with principles of effective altruism and nobody says anything because I assume the funder and the causes are hyped? I have a lot of respect for someone who funds something like Charity Entrepreneurship, it’s definitely one of the best things EA did. However the rest doesn’t speak in their favor and doesn’t justify this debauchery.
Tell me more about these “luxurious AI safety retreats”? I haven’t been to an AI safety workshop in several years, and wonder if something has changed. From searching the web, I found this:
and this:
And not much visible evidence of luxury.
That’s one example, it is only one though; many other fellowships are very well-paid, up to 3000 euros per month, I’m thinking SERI/CHERI/CERI
Can I suggest you make this a new top-level post and link to it here? It sounds like you’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I think continued discussion would probably be better in its own post rather than here (although your original comment makes sense here for sure!)
Thanks for saying this. Sadly there is a lot of deference when it comes to AI safety and its questionable researchers, and while EA claims it loves criticism, I didn’t meet much love when raising my concerns.
In a group that is composed at 80% by rich white males who have a STEM background where AI safety allows them to get the recognition of their technical skills AND a huge pay, raising such concerns never goes well.
I’m actually preparing a series of post on the lack of diversity within AI and cultural biases will be part of it—how your critical thinking shuts down when it comes to doing work you love, and how evidence that existential risks should be prioritized falls apart under hard criticism (see David Thorsad’s criticism of Bostrom’s famous number 10^16). I expect much pushback and blind denial, as I can see with the comments under my own post that are pretty much just saying ‘AI researchers deserve to be paid well because ML is hard’. I have news: it’s far from unique to AI safety, sadly.
Which of the comments under your post do you read that way?
I understand the standard argument to be more like “AI researchers have commercial options that will pay them very highly, so it’s hard to get good AI researchers to work on altruistic projects if you offer too far below what they could be making elsewhere”.
Fellowships where you seek people with excellent machine learning skills should be well-paid to attract talent, especially given how much such people can make doing capacity research.
3000 per month for beginners in an AI fellowship is way, way too much.
We need to stop considering machine learning engineers as la crème de la crème and justify these exorbitant salaries based on that assumption. The tractability and impact measuring of the work of these people is highly questionable (the causality series written by RP rates existential risk research at 2 on a scale from 1 to 5, tractability-wise).
$3,000 a month in San Francisco is literally under minimum wage. Entry level salaries in data science in the US, for people fresh out of college or a boot camp program, is like $8,000 a month.
I should have specified: the fellowships I’m talking about are in London/Switzerland. Still expensive but nothing that justifies paying people with barely a bachelor degree and no work experience
I don’t think that helps much? If it was in, say, Geneva then $3k/month is under minimum wage.
(I agree $3k/month is above minimum wage in London)
Is your actual objection to hiring new grads to at all?
sounds like it’s also below Zurich minimum wage (not totally sure if that minimum wage is currently in effect or not) and similar to the London “living wage” (which isn’t a required thing)
How much should a technical researcher be paid during an AI safety fellowship in your opinion? 3000 Euro per month does not sound like a lot to me.
(Actually, I think that many AI safety researchers are being paid a lot more than just 3000 Euro. My guess is that some at Anthropic might earn 6 times as much).
We’re talking fellows, so people with very little experience and no certainty of impact at all. You’re comparing this with fully-fledged Anthropic researchers, which doesn’t make sense at all.
And I could talk how these researchers at Anthropic are probably paid way too much for the tractability of their work, but I guess this asks for another post.