While it is fine to criticize organizations in the EA community for actions that may cause harm, EAs should avoid scrutinizing other community membersâ personal career choices unless those individuals ask them for feedback.
Do you feel like there are some clearly harmful (legal) jobs where personal criticism is appropriate, or is it that you donât think AI capabilities clears this bar?
If the former this doesnât sound right to me? I agree there are ways of approaching this sort of interaction that are more or less likely to go well, but if I was telling you about my plan to make the world better through my direct work in breeding more feed-efficient chickens so more people could afford meat, or about my plans to engineer avian flu viruses for mammal-to-mammal transmission so we could plan vaccines, I think youâd be pretty reasonable trying to convince me that my work was harmful and I should do something else?
I think it depends a lot on the number of options the person has. Many people in the tech community, especially those from marginalized groups, have told me that they donât have the luxury to avoid jobs they perceive as harmful, such as many jobs in Big Tech and the military. But I think that doesnât apply to the case of someone applying to a capabilities position at OpenAI when they could apply literally anywhere else in the tech industry.
Do you feel like there are some clearly harmful (legal) jobs where personal criticism is appropriate, or is it that you donât think AI capabilities clears this bar?
If the former this doesnât sound right to me? I agree there are ways of approaching this sort of interaction that are more or less likely to go well, but if I was telling you about my plan to make the world better through my direct work in breeding more feed-efficient chickens so more people could afford meat, or about my plans to engineer avian flu viruses for mammal-to-mammal transmission so we could plan vaccines, I think youâd be pretty reasonable trying to convince me that my work was harmful and I should do something else?
More example harmful jobs, from 80k in 2015:
Marketing and R&D for compulsive behaviours such as smoking, alcoholism, gambling, and payday loans
Factory farming
Homeopathy and other fraudulent medical technologies
Patent trolls
Lobbying for rent-seeking businesses or industries
Weapons research
Borderline fraudulent lending or otherwise making a financial firm highly risky
Fundraising for a charity that achieves nothing, or does harm
Forest clearing
Tax minimisation for the super rich
I think it depends a lot on the number of options the person has. Many people in the tech community, especially those from marginalized groups, have told me that they donât have the luxury to avoid jobs they perceive as harmful, such as many jobs in Big Tech and the military. But I think that doesnât apply to the case of someone applying to a capabilities position at OpenAI when they could apply literally anywhere else in the tech industry.