”We should be suspicious of people who decide the most important thing to do is what they would have the most fun doing anyway”. (regarding AI safety).
I also am also suspicious about this, and suspect it to be a source of bias towards AI safety at the expense of other cause areas, regardless of the “true” importance of AI safety (FWIW I think its important),
Also I think she’s broadly right that EA is spending millions hosting AI safety conferences. I would imagine EAG Bay Area is over 50% AI safety focused, and millions is spent on that.
I also think saying AI safety is “particularly well funded” is a subjective call and I wouldn’t even say “basically untrue”. Its not an unreasonable take given all the jobs in AI companies plus EA funded AI safety jobs out of labs. As a comparison I’m not sure what animal welfare spend vs. AI safety spend is but I imagine it wouldn’t be an order of magnitude higher?
Despite all this, I disagreed with much of what she said, but I would put this in the top 30% of EA criticism I’ve seen (not hard given how much dross there is out there).
And one should probably give some weight to limitations imposed by the medium—a 3-minute video on a platform whose users are on average not known for having long attention spans.
For what it’s worth, I would guess that though the “funness” of AI safety research, or maybe especially technical AI safety research, is probably a factor in determining how many people are interested in working on that, I would be surprised if it’s a factor in determining how much money is allocated towards that as a field.
Thanks for the response, and to be honest it’s something that I’d agree with too. I’ve edited my initial comment to better reflect what’s actually true. I wouldn’t call the EA Global that I’ve been to an “AI Safety Conference,” but if Bay Area is truly different it wouldn’t surprise me. “Well-funded” is also subjective, and I think it’s likely that I was letting my reflexive defensiveness get in the way of engaging directly. That said, I think the broader point about it exposing a weakness in EA comms and the comments reflecting broad low-trust attitudes towards ideas like EA stand, and I hope people continue to engage with them.
I thought her main point was pretty good,.
”We should be suspicious of people who decide the most important thing to do is what they would have the most fun doing anyway”. (regarding AI safety).
I also am also suspicious about this, and suspect it to be a source of bias towards AI safety at the expense of other cause areas, regardless of the “true” importance of AI safety (FWIW I think its important),
Also I think she’s broadly right that EA is spending millions hosting AI safety conferences. I would imagine EAG Bay Area is over 50% AI safety focused, and millions is spent on that.
I also think saying AI safety is “particularly well funded” is a subjective call and I wouldn’t even say “basically untrue”. Its not an unreasonable take given all the jobs in AI companies plus EA funded AI safety jobs out of labs. As a comparison I’m not sure what animal welfare spend vs. AI safety spend is but I imagine it wouldn’t be an order of magnitude higher?
Despite all this, I disagreed with much of what she said, but I would put this in the top 30% of EA criticism I’ve seen (not hard given how much dross there is out there).
And one should probably give some weight to limitations imposed by the medium—a 3-minute video on a platform whose users are on average not known for having long attention spans.
For what it’s worth, I would guess that though the “funness” of AI safety research, or maybe especially technical AI safety research, is probably a factor in determining how many people are interested in working on that, I would be surprised if it’s a factor in determining how much money is allocated towards that as a field.
Thanks for the response, and to be honest it’s something that I’d agree with too. I’ve edited my initial comment to better reflect what’s actually true. I wouldn’t call the EA Global that I’ve been to an “AI Safety Conference,” but if Bay Area is truly different it wouldn’t surprise me. “Well-funded” is also subjective, and I think it’s likely that I was letting my reflexive defensiveness get in the way of engaging directly. That said, I think the broader point about it exposing a weakness in EA comms and the comments reflecting broad low-trust attitudes towards ideas like EA stand, and I hope people continue to engage with them.
Yep 100% agree with the weakness in EA comms. I’m happy there’s been a fair amount of chat recently about this on the forum.