Good question. My hunch is that EA as a culture tends to prioritize epistemic and ethical sophistication and rigor, over direct ‘political’ action. And has traditionally avoided getting involved in issues that seem ‘intractable’ by virtue of being highly controversial and potentially partisan.
Against that background of EA’s rather ‘ivory tower’ ethos, any direct protests may tend to be seen as rather simplistic, strident, and undignified—even for issues such as animal agriculture where there’s pretty strong EA consensus that factory farming is unethical.
But I think it’s time for EAs to climb down from our AI safety debates, recognize that the leading AI companies are not actually prioritizing safety, and start getting more involved in social media activism and in-person protests.
I think this is untrue with regards to animal protests. My impression is a decently significant percentage of EA people working on animals have participated in protests
Good question. My hunch is that EA as a culture tends to prioritize epistemic and ethical sophistication and rigor, over direct ‘political’ action. And has traditionally avoided getting involved in issues that seem ‘intractable’ by virtue of being highly controversial and potentially partisan.
Against that background of EA’s rather ‘ivory tower’ ethos, any direct protests may tend to be seen as rather simplistic, strident, and undignified—even for issues such as animal agriculture where there’s pretty strong EA consensus that factory farming is unethical.
But I think it’s time for EAs to climb down from our AI safety debates, recognize that the leading AI companies are not actually prioritizing safety, and start getting more involved in social media activism and in-person protests.
I think this is untrue with regards to animal protests. My impression is a decently significant percentage of EA people working on animals have participated in protests
Thank you for your response! Along with the EA community, I too am scared of doing activism for something controversial and bizarre like AI safety
Hi Geoffrey, what do you think about the #PauseAI movement?