We believe the effective altruism movement is, unfortunately, controlled opposition. The less influence it has on AI safety, the better.
I really don’t like it when people paint the whole movement with one brush, but they’re not wrong that there’s a subset of AI safety/EA that behaves like controlled opposition. Obvious example is Anthropic/Dario (who was one of the first GWWC signatories); Good Ventures basically doesn’t fund anything that might be bad for AI company stock prices; I can think of some other possible examples but I don’t want to denigrate anyone in case I’m wrong.
It’s definitely not true that the whole movement is controlled opposition. Here I am, an EA, loudly advocating for a pause on AI development. There are plenty of us low-level EAs who oppose AI companies, but we don’t control funding.
More EA in da news: https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2034047505336295904
And the spicy CAIS take: https://x.com/cais/status/2034389842076025164?s=46
From the CAIS tweet:
I really don’t like it when people paint the whole movement with one brush, but they’re not wrong that there’s a subset of AI safety/EA that behaves like controlled opposition. Obvious example is Anthropic/Dario (who was one of the first GWWC signatories); Good Ventures basically doesn’t fund anything that might be bad for AI company stock prices; I can think of some other possible examples but I don’t want to denigrate anyone in case I’m wrong.
It’s definitely not true that the whole movement is controlled opposition. Here I am, an EA, loudly advocating for a pause on AI development. There are plenty of us low-level EAs who oppose AI companies, but we don’t control funding.