I definitely agree that EA should aim to be cooler and more accessible to average people, but you need to be careful. Aiming for maximum virality can come at a cost to truth-seeking and epistemological rigour.
For example, if EA follows your advice and grows to a million members off the back of a “sam altman is a villain” campaign, that campaign will become the source of 99% of EAs members, all of whom will have been preferentially selected for having an anti-openAI stance. If it turns out that openAI is actually good for humanity (somehow), it would be very hard for the cool EA to come to that conclusion.
picking villains comes at some risk to truth seeing sure, but Sam Altman is a pretty slam dunk villain.
breaks down the non profit purpose of openAI
creeps onto Scarlett Johansson in a sickening way
first states me wants AI regulation then spends 10s of millions lobbying against it.
I think Sam Altman can remain an ideal villain even if Open AI does end up being good for the world—that wouldn’t discredit the movement. The guy has so obviously proved his evilness through actions plain for the world to see and in ways understandable to all different types of people.
I definitely agree that EA should aim to be cooler and more accessible to average people, but you need to be careful. Aiming for maximum virality can come at a cost to truth-seeking and epistemological rigour.
For example, if EA follows your advice and grows to a million members off the back of a “sam altman is a villain” campaign, that campaign will become the source of 99% of EAs members, all of whom will have been preferentially selected for having an anti-openAI stance. If it turns out that openAI is actually good for humanity (somehow), it would be very hard for the cool EA to come to that conclusion.
picking villains comes at some risk to truth seeing sure, but Sam Altman is a pretty slam dunk villain.
breaks down the non profit purpose of openAI
creeps onto Scarlett Johansson in a sickening way
first states me wants AI regulation then spends 10s of millions lobbying against it.
I think Sam Altman can remain an ideal villain even if Open AI does end up being good for the world—that wouldn’t discredit the movement. The guy has so obviously proved his evilness through actions plain for the world to see and in ways understandable to all different types of people.