I have been publicly labeled a “sellout and traitor” on X by a prominent member of the EA community simply because I cofounded an AI startup.
This accusation was not because you cofounded an AI startup. It was specifically because you took funding to work on AI safety from people who want to slow down AI development use capability trends to better understand how to make AI safer*, and you are now (allegedly) using results developed from that funding to start a company dedicated to accelerating AI capabilities.
I don’t know exactly what results Mechanize is using, but if this is true, then it does indeed constitute a betrayal. Not because you’re accelerating capabilities, but because you took AI safety funding and used the results to do the opposite of what funders wanted.
*Corrected to give a more accurate characterization, see Chris Leong’s comment
If this line of reasoning is truly the basis for calling me a “sellout” and a “traitor”, then I think the accusation becomes even more unfounded and misguided. The claim is not only unreasonable: it is also factually incorrect by any straightforward or good-faith interpretation of the facts.
To be absolutely clear: I have never taken funds that were earmarked for slowing down AI development and redirected them toward accelerating AI capabilities. There has been no repurposing or misuse of philanthropic funding that I am aware of. The startup in question is an entirely new and independent entity. It was created from scratch, and it is funded separately—it is not backed by any of the philanthropic donations I received in the past. There is no financial or operational overlap.
Furthermore, we do not plan on meaningfully making use of benchmarks, datasets, or tools that were developed during my previous roles in any substantial capacity at the new startup. We are not relying on that prior work to advance our current mission. And as far as I can tell, we have never claimed or implied otherwise publicly.
It’s also important to address the deeper assumption here: that I am somehow morally or legally obligated to permanently align my actions with the preferences or ideological views of past philanthropic funders who supported an organization that employed me. That notion seems absurd. It has no basis in ordinary social norms, legal standards, or moral expectations. People routinely change roles, perspectives evolve, and institutions have limited scopes and timelines. Holding someone to an indefinite obligation based solely on past philanthropic support would be unreasonable.
Even if, for the sake of argument, such an obligation did exist, it would still not apply in this case—because, unless I am mistaken, the philanthropic grant that supported me as an employee never included any stipulation about slowing down AI in the first place. As far as I know, that goal was never made explicit in the grant terms, which renders the current accusations irrelevant and unfounded.
Ultimately, these criticisms appear unsupported by evidence, logic, or any widely accepted ethical standards. They seem more consistent with a kind of ideological or tribal backlash to the idea of accelerating AI than with genuine, thoughtful, and evidence-based concerns.
It’s also important to address the deeper assumption here: that I am somehow morally or legally obligated to permanently align my actions with the preferences or ideological views of past philanthropic funders who supported an organization that employed me. That notion seems absurd. It has no basis in ordinary social norms, legal standards, or moral expectations. People routinely change roles, perspectives evolve, and institutions have limited scopes and timelines. Holding someone to an indefinite obligation based solely on past philanthropic support would be unreasonable.
I don’t think a lifetime obligation is the steelmanned version of your critics’ narrative, though. A time-limited version will work just as well for them.
In many circumstances, I do think society does recognize a time-limited moral obligation and social norm not to work for the other side from those providing you significant resources,[1] --although I am not convinced it would in the specific circumstances involving you and Epoch. So although I would probably acquit you of the alleged norm violation here, I would not want others drawing larger conclusions about the obligation / norm from that acquittal than warranted.[2]
There is something else here, though. At least in the government sector, time-limited post-employment restrictions are not uncommon. They are intended to avoid the appearance of impropriety as much as actual impropriety itself. In those cases, we don’t trust the departing employee not to use their prior public service for private gain in certain ways. Moreover, we recognize that even the appearance that they are doing so creates social costs. The AIS community generally can’t establish and enforce legally binding post-employment restrictions, but is of course free to criticize people whose post-employment conduct it finds inappropriate under community standards. (“Traitor” is rather poorly calibrated to those circumstances, but most of the on-Forum criticism has been somewhat more measured than that.)
Although I’d defer to people with subject-matter expertise on whether there is an appearance of impropriety here, [3] I would note that is a significant lower standard for your critics to satisfy than proving actual impropriety. If there’s a close enough fit between your prior employment and new enterprise, that could be enough to establish a rebuttable presumption of an appearance.
For instance, I would consider it shady for a new lawyer to accept a competitive job with Treehuggers (made up organization); gain skill, reputation, and career capital for several years through Treehuggers’ investment of money and mentorship resources; and then use said skill and reputation to jump directly to a position at Big Timber with a big financial upside. I would generally consider anyone who did that as something of . . . well, a traitor and a sellout to Treehuggers and the environmental movement.
This should also not be seen as endorsing your specific defense rationale. For instance, I don’t think an explicit “stipulation about slowing down AI” in grant language would be necessary to create an obligation.
My deference extends to deciding what impropriety means here, but “meaningfully making use of benchmarks, datasets, or tools that were developed during [your] previous roles” in a way that was substantially assisted by your previous roles sounds like a plausible first draft of at least one form of impropriety.
At least in the government sector, time-limited post-employment restrictions are not uncommon. They are intended to avoid the appearance of impropriety as much as actual impropriety itself. In those cases, we don’t trust the departing employee not to use their prior public service for private gain in certain ways.
This is also a massive burning of the commons. It is valuable for forecasting/evals orgs to be able to hire people with a diversity of viewpoints in order to counter bias. It is valuable for folks to be able to share information freely with folks at such forecasting orgs without having to worry about them going off and doing something like this.
However, this only works if those less worried about AI risks who join such a collaboration don’t use the knowledge they gain to cash in on the AI boom in an acceleratory way. Doing so undermines the very point of such a project, namely, to try to make AI go well. Doing so is incredibly damaging to trust within the community.
I agree that Michael’s framing doesn’t quite work. It’s not even clear to me that OpenPhil, for example, is aiming to “slow down AI development” as opposed to “fund research into understanding AI capability trends better without accidentally causing capability externalities”.
I’ve previously written a critique here, but the TLDR is that Mechanise is a major burning of the commons that damages trust within the Effective Altruism community and creates a major challenge for funders who want to support ideological diversity in forecasting organisations without accidentally causing capability externalities.
Furthermore, we do not plan on meaningfully making use of benchmarks, datasets, or tools that were developed during my previous roles in any substantial capacity at the new startup. We are not relying on that prior work to advance our current mission. And as far as I can tell, we have never claimed or implied otherwise publicly.
This is a useful clarification. I had a weak impression that Mechanise might be.
They seem more consistent with a kind of ideological or tribal backlash to the idea of accelerating AI than with genuine, thoughtful, and evidence-based concerns.
I agree that some of your critics may not have quite been able to hit the nail on the head when they tried to articulate their critiques (it took me substantial effort to figure out what I precisely thought was wrong, as opposed to just ‘this feels bad’), but I believe that the general thrust of their arguments more or less holds up.
I agree that some of your critics may not have quite been able to hit the nail on the head when they tried to articulate their critiques (it took me substantial effort to figure out what I precisely thought was wrong, as opposed to just ‘this feels bad’), but I believe that the general thrust of their arguments generally holds up.
In context, this comes across to me as an overly charitable characterization of what actually occurred: someone publicly labeled me a literal traitor and then made a baseless, false accusation against me. What’s even more concerning is that this unfounded claim is now apparently being repeated and upvoted by others.
When communities choose to excuse or downplay this kind of behavior—by interpreting it in the most charitable possible way, or by glossing over it as being “essentially correct”—they end up legitimizing what is, in fact, a low-effort personal attack without a factual basis. Brushing aside or downplaying such attacks as if they are somehow valid or acceptable doesn’t just misrepresent the situation; it actively undermines the conditions necessary for good faith engagement and genuine truth-seeking.
I urge you to recognize that tolerating or rationalizing this type of behavior has real social consequences. It fosters a hostile environment, discourages honest dialogue, and ultimately corrodes the integrity of any community that claims to value fairness and reasoned discussion.
I think Holly just said what a lot of people were feeling and I find that hard to condemn.
”Traitor” is a bit of a strong term, but it’s pretty natural for burning the commons to result in significantly less trust. To be honest, the main reason why I wouldn’t use that term myself is that it reifies individual actions into a permanent personal characteristic and I don’t have the context to make any such judgments. I’d be quite comfortable with saying that founding Mechanise was a betrayal of sorts, where the “of sorts” clarifies that I’m construing the term broadly.
Glossing over it as being “essentially correct”
This characterisation doesn’t quite match what happened. My comment wasn’t along the lines, “Oh, it’s essentially correct, close enough is good enough, details are unimportant”, but I actually wrote down what I thought a more careful analysis would look like.
They end up legitimizing what is, in fact, a low-effort personal attack without a factual basis
Part of the reason why I’ve been commenting is to encourage folks to make more precise critiques. And indeed, Michael has updated his previous comment in response to what I wrote.
A baseless, false accusation
Is it baseless?
I noticed you wrote: “we do not plan on meaningfully making use”. That provides you with substantial wriggle room. So it’s unclear to me at this stage that your statements being true/defensible would necessitate her statements being false.
Yes, absolutely. With respect, unless you can provide some evidence indicating that I’ve acted improperly, I see no productive reason to continue engaging on this point.
What concerns me most here is that the accusation seems to be treated as credible despite no evidence being presented and a clear denial from me. That pattern—assuming accusations about individuals who criticize or act against core dogmas are true without evidence—is precisely the kind of cult-like behavior I referenced in my original comment.
Suggesting that I’ve left myself “substantial wiggle room” misinterprets what I intended, and given the lack of supporting evidence, it feels unfair and unnecessarily adversarial. Repeatedly implying that I’ve acted improperly without concrete substantiation does not reflect a good-faith approach to discussion.
If you don’t want to engage, that’s perfectly fine. I’ve written a lot of comments and responding to all of them would take substantial time. It wouldn’t be fair to expect that from you.
That said, labelling asking for clarification “cult-like behaviour” is absurd. On the contrary, not naively taking claims at face value is a crucial defence against this. Furthermore, implying that someone asking questions in bad faith is precisely the technique that cult leaders use[1].
I said that the statement left you substantial wiggle room. This was purely a comment about how the statement could have a broad range of interpretations. I did not state, nor mean to imply, that this vagueness was intentional or in bad faith.
That said, people asking questions in bad faith is actually pretty common and so you can’t assume that something is a cult just because they say that their critics are mostly acting in bad faith.
To be clear, I was not calling your request for clarification “cult-like”. My comment was directed at how the accusation against me was seemingly handled—as though it were credible until I could somehow prove otherwise. No evidence was offered to support the claim. Instead, assertions were made without substantiation. I directly and clearly denied the accusations, but despite that, the line of questioning continued in a way that strongly suggested the accusation might still be valid.
To illustrate the issue more clearly: imagine if I were to accuse you of something completely baseless, and even after your firm denials, I continued to press you with questions that implicitly treated the accusation as credible. You would likely find that approach deeply frustrating and unfair, and understandably so. You’d be entirely justified in pushing back against it.
That said, I acknowledge that describing the behavior as “cult-like” may have generated more heat than light. It likely escalated the tone unnecessarily, and I’ll be more careful to avoid that kind of rhetoric going forward.
I can see why you’d find this personally frustrating.
On the other hand, many people in the community, myself included, took certain claims from OpenAI and sbf at face value when it might have been more prudent to be less trusting. I understand that it must be unpleasant to face some degree of distrust due to the actions of others.
And I can see why you’d see your statements as a firm denial, whilst from my perspective, they were ambiguous. For example, I don’t know how to interpret your use of the word “meaningful”, so I don’t actually know what exactly you’ve denied. It may be clear to you because you know what you mean, but it isn’t clear to me.
(For what it’s worth, I neither upvoted nor downvoted the comment you made before this one, but I did disagree vote it.)
“From people who want to slow down AI development”
The framing here could be tighter. It’s more about wanting to be able to understand AI capability trends better without accidentally causing capability externalities.
Yes I think that is better than what I said, both because it’s more accurate, and because it’s more clear that Matthew did in fact use his knowledge of capability trends to decide that he could profit from starting an AI company.
Like, I don’t know what exactly went into his decision, but I would be surprised if that knowledge didn’t play a role.
Arguably that’s less on Matthew and more on the founders of Epoch for either misrepresenting themselves or having a bad hiring filter. Probably the former—if I’m not mistaken, Tamay Besiroglu co-founded Epoch and is now co-founding Mechanize, so I would say Tamay behaved badly here but I’m not sure whether Matthew did.
This accusation was not because you cofounded an AI startup. It was specifically because you took funding to work on AI safety from people who want to
slow down AI developmentuse capability trends to better understand how to make AI safer*, and you are now (allegedly) using results developed from that funding to start a company dedicated to accelerating AI capabilities.I don’t know exactly what results Mechanize is using, but if this is true, then it does indeed constitute a betrayal. Not because you’re accelerating capabilities, but because you took AI safety funding and used the results to do the opposite of what funders wanted.
*Corrected to give a more accurate characterization, see Chris Leong’s comment
If this line of reasoning is truly the basis for calling me a “sellout” and a “traitor”, then I think the accusation becomes even more unfounded and misguided. The claim is not only unreasonable: it is also factually incorrect by any straightforward or good-faith interpretation of the facts.
To be absolutely clear: I have never taken funds that were earmarked for slowing down AI development and redirected them toward accelerating AI capabilities. There has been no repurposing or misuse of philanthropic funding that I am aware of. The startup in question is an entirely new and independent entity. It was created from scratch, and it is funded separately—it is not backed by any of the philanthropic donations I received in the past. There is no financial or operational overlap.
Furthermore, we do not plan on meaningfully making use of benchmarks, datasets, or tools that were developed during my previous roles in any substantial capacity at the new startup. We are not relying on that prior work to advance our current mission. And as far as I can tell, we have never claimed or implied otherwise publicly.
It’s also important to address the deeper assumption here: that I am somehow morally or legally obligated to permanently align my actions with the preferences or ideological views of past philanthropic funders who supported an organization that employed me. That notion seems absurd. It has no basis in ordinary social norms, legal standards, or moral expectations. People routinely change roles, perspectives evolve, and institutions have limited scopes and timelines. Holding someone to an indefinite obligation based solely on past philanthropic support would be unreasonable.
Even if, for the sake of argument, such an obligation did exist, it would still not apply in this case—because, unless I am mistaken, the philanthropic grant that supported me as an employee never included any stipulation about slowing down AI in the first place. As far as I know, that goal was never made explicit in the grant terms, which renders the current accusations irrelevant and unfounded.
Ultimately, these criticisms appear unsupported by evidence, logic, or any widely accepted ethical standards. They seem more consistent with a kind of ideological or tribal backlash to the idea of accelerating AI than with genuine, thoughtful, and evidence-based concerns.
I don’t think a lifetime obligation is the steelmanned version of your critics’ narrative, though. A time-limited version will work just as well for them.
In many circumstances, I do think society does recognize a time-limited moral obligation and social norm not to work for the other side from those providing you significant resources,[1] --although I am not convinced it would in the specific circumstances involving you and Epoch. So although I would probably acquit you of the alleged norm violation here, I would not want others drawing larger conclusions about the obligation / norm from that acquittal than warranted.[2]
There is something else here, though. At least in the government sector, time-limited post-employment restrictions are not uncommon. They are intended to avoid the appearance of impropriety as much as actual impropriety itself. In those cases, we don’t trust the departing employee not to use their prior public service for private gain in certain ways. Moreover, we recognize that even the appearance that they are doing so creates social costs. The AIS community generally can’t establish and enforce legally binding post-employment restrictions, but is of course free to criticize people whose post-employment conduct it finds inappropriate under community standards. (“Traitor” is rather poorly calibrated to those circumstances, but most of the on-Forum criticism has been somewhat more measured than that.)
Although I’d defer to people with subject-matter expertise on whether there is an appearance of impropriety here, [3] I would note that is a significant lower standard for your critics to satisfy than proving actual impropriety. If there’s a close enough fit between your prior employment and new enterprise, that could be enough to establish a rebuttable presumption of an appearance.
For instance, I would consider it shady for a new lawyer to accept a competitive job with Treehuggers (made up organization); gain skill, reputation, and career capital for several years through Treehuggers’ investment of money and mentorship resources; and then use said skill and reputation to jump directly to a position at Big Timber with a big financial upside. I would generally consider anyone who did that as something of . . . well, a traitor and a sellout to Treehuggers and the environmental movement.
This should also not be seen as endorsing your specific defense rationale. For instance, I don’t think an explicit “stipulation about slowing down AI” in grant language would be necessary to create an obligation.
My deference extends to deciding what impropriety means here, but “meaningfully making use of benchmarks, datasets, or tools that were developed during [your] previous roles” in a way that was substantially assisted by your previous roles sounds like a plausible first draft of at least one form of impropriety.
My argument for this being bad is quite similar to what you’ve written.
I agree that Michael’s framing doesn’t quite work. It’s not even clear to me that OpenPhil, for example, is aiming to “slow down AI development” as opposed to “fund research into understanding AI capability trends better without accidentally causing capability externalities”.
I’ve previously written a critique here, but the TLDR is that Mechanise is a major burning of the commons that damages trust within the Effective Altruism community and creates a major challenge for funders who want to support ideological diversity in forecasting organisations without accidentally causing capability externalities.
This is a useful clarification. I had a weak impression that Mechanise might be.
I agree that some of your critics may not have quite been able to hit the nail on the head when they tried to articulate their critiques (it took me substantial effort to figure out what I precisely thought was wrong, as opposed to just ‘this feels bad’), but I believe that the general thrust of their arguments more or less holds up.
In context, this comes across to me as an overly charitable characterization of what actually occurred: someone publicly labeled me a literal traitor and then made a baseless, false accusation against me. What’s even more concerning is that this unfounded claim is now apparently being repeated and upvoted by others.
When communities choose to excuse or downplay this kind of behavior—by interpreting it in the most charitable possible way, or by glossing over it as being “essentially correct”—they end up legitimizing what is, in fact, a low-effort personal attack without a factual basis. Brushing aside or downplaying such attacks as if they are somehow valid or acceptable doesn’t just misrepresent the situation; it actively undermines the conditions necessary for good faith engagement and genuine truth-seeking.
I urge you to recognize that tolerating or rationalizing this type of behavior has real social consequences. It fosters a hostile environment, discourages honest dialogue, and ultimately corrodes the integrity of any community that claims to value fairness and reasoned discussion.
I think Holly just said what a lot of people were feeling and I find that hard to condemn.
”Traitor” is a bit of a strong term, but it’s pretty natural for burning the commons to result in significantly less trust. To be honest, the main reason why I wouldn’t use that term myself is that it reifies individual actions into a permanent personal characteristic and I don’t have the context to make any such judgments. I’d be quite comfortable with saying that founding Mechanise was a betrayal of sorts, where the “of sorts” clarifies that I’m construing the term broadly.
This characterisation doesn’t quite match what happened. My comment wasn’t along the lines, “Oh, it’s essentially correct, close enough is good enough, details are unimportant”, but I actually wrote down what I thought a more careful analysis would look like.
Part of the reason why I’ve been commenting is to encourage folks to make more precise critiques. And indeed, Michael has updated his previous comment in response to what I wrote.
Is it baseless?
I noticed you wrote: “we do not plan on meaningfully making use”. That provides you with substantial wriggle room. So it’s unclear to me at this stage that your statements being true/defensible would necessitate her statements being false.
Yes, absolutely. With respect, unless you can provide some evidence indicating that I’ve acted improperly, I see no productive reason to continue engaging on this point.
What concerns me most here is that the accusation seems to be treated as credible despite no evidence being presented and a clear denial from me. That pattern—assuming accusations about individuals who criticize or act against core dogmas are true without evidence—is precisely the kind of cult-like behavior I referenced in my original comment.
Suggesting that I’ve left myself “substantial wiggle room” misinterprets what I intended, and given the lack of supporting evidence, it feels unfair and unnecessarily adversarial. Repeatedly implying that I’ve acted improperly without concrete substantiation does not reflect a good-faith approach to discussion.
If you don’t want to engage, that’s perfectly fine. I’ve written a lot of comments and responding to all of them would take substantial time. It wouldn’t be fair to expect that from you.
That said, labelling asking for clarification “cult-like behaviour” is absurd. On the contrary, not naively taking claims at face value is a crucial defence against this. Furthermore, implying that someone asking questions in bad faith is precisely the technique that cult leaders use[1].
I said that the statement left you substantial wiggle room. This was purely a comment about how the statement could have a broad range of interpretations. I did not state, nor mean to imply, that this vagueness was intentional or in bad faith.
That said, people asking questions in bad faith is actually pretty common and so you can’t assume that something is a cult just because they say that their critics are mostly acting in bad faith.
To be clear, I was not calling your request for clarification “cult-like”. My comment was directed at how the accusation against me was seemingly handled—as though it were credible until I could somehow prove otherwise. No evidence was offered to support the claim. Instead, assertions were made without substantiation. I directly and clearly denied the accusations, but despite that, the line of questioning continued in a way that strongly suggested the accusation might still be valid.
To illustrate the issue more clearly: imagine if I were to accuse you of something completely baseless, and even after your firm denials, I continued to press you with questions that implicitly treated the accusation as credible. You would likely find that approach deeply frustrating and unfair, and understandably so. You’d be entirely justified in pushing back against it.
That said, I acknowledge that describing the behavior as “cult-like” may have generated more heat than light. It likely escalated the tone unnecessarily, and I’ll be more careful to avoid that kind of rhetoric going forward.
I can see why you’d find this personally frustrating.
On the other hand, many people in the community, myself included, took certain claims from OpenAI and sbf at face value when it might have been more prudent to be less trusting. I understand that it must be unpleasant to face some degree of distrust due to the actions of others.
And I can see why you’d see your statements as a firm denial, whilst from my perspective, they were ambiguous. For example, I don’t know how to interpret your use of the word “meaningful”, so I don’t actually know what exactly you’ve denied. It may be clear to you because you know what you mean, but it isn’t clear to me.
(For what it’s worth, I neither upvoted nor downvoted the comment you made before this one, but I did disagree vote it.)
Holly herself believes standards of criticism should be higher than what (judging by the comments here without being familiar with the overall situation) she seems to have employed here; see Criticism is sanctified in EA, but, like any intervention, criticism needs to pay rent.
“From people who want to slow down AI development”
The framing here could be tighter. It’s more about wanting to be able to understand AI capability trends better without accidentally causing capability externalities.
Yes I think that is better than what I said, both because it’s more accurate, and because it’s more clear that Matthew did in fact use his knowledge of capability trends to decide that he could profit from starting an AI company.
Like, I don’t know what exactly went into his decision, but I would be surprised if that knowledge didn’t play a role.
Arguably that’s less on Matthew and more on the founders of Epoch for either misrepresenting themselves or having a bad hiring filter. Probably the former—if I’m not mistaken, Tamay Besiroglu co-founded Epoch and is now co-founding Mechanize, so I would say Tamay behaved badly here but I’m not sure whether Matthew did.