The EA movement has a PR problem with basically half the American political spectrum which includes the US President and also Elon Musk whose xAI is currently the fourth most capable American AI company and judging from the comments here, on X and elsewhere the plan seems to be to make it worse. Frankly the discourse isn’t “effective” at all, but virtue signaling.
There are areas where almost unbridgeable tensions between the EA and the MAGA movement exist, but AI alignement really doesn’t have to be one of them.
Effectiveness requires being able to tell the truth, even if it is unpalatable to certain political factions. The actions of Hegseth are unreasonable and set a horrible precedent for companies looking to maintain even the barest of moral principles. Anthropic tried to engage in good faith with the administration and were stabbed in the back over it.
In this case Anthropic chose to supply the DoW via a partnership with a company deeply embedded in the administration’s part of the political spectrum, and even pointedly denied any objections to being used to support the administration’s little expedition in Venezuela, and the administration decided that wasn’t enough. There are many criticisms that can be made of Anthropic’s stance on those issues; reluctance to engage with the current US administration isn’t one of them.
If declining to actively support MAGA’s demands they support development of AI with the explicit purpose of being an autonomous killing device is “virtue signalling”, what’s left of “AI alignment” to pursue?
The most EA leaning AI company just took a major loss and Hegseth specifically called out the movement which strongly suggests that the future won’t be what EAs would like it to be if he or people like him have a say about it which they will.
I’ve never been more proud to be part of the Effective Altruism movement
Why? Because it took the right stance and lost? Because MAGA is bad and dislikes EA? This is what I mean by virtue signaling. I should have been clearer about that in my initial comment.
If declining to actively support MAGA’s demands they support development of AI with the explicit purpose of being an autonomous killing device is “virtue signalling”, what’s left of “AI alignment” to pursue?
I would prefer the US to have these capabilities over the US and non democratic-countries or just non-democratic countries having them. Amodei btw. also thinks that it might be necessary in the future to develop such weapons. He said so in this interview. He argues that legislation hasn’t cought up with AI and that in the future Congress should decide on it and not a private company. But if you believe that AI improves on an exponential curve then future legislation will very quickly be even more outdated so that argument doesn’t really make sense to me...
To clarify. I don’t think declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk is justified.
While I do think that the EA movement should not straight out alienate the MAGA movement, trying to pander to them is a dangerous move. Honestly, attempting a rational discourse with them is very difficult under the current climate, and perhaps even arguably futile. Under conditions like this, maybe the most effective action is to stand your ground (even there iffy things that Anthropic does) and oppose what are they trying to do (at least stop making the problem worse if you can no longer solve it)? Is having a moral bare minimum too much to ask?
This question of whether EA to attempting to win MAGA over reminds me of the current UK political situation (sorry if I get something badly inaccurate): Labour tried to garner the support of the far right and failed horribly cause the far right is going to hate it anyways. On the contrary, the Greens holds its ground and benefits a lot as a result!
I appreciate the different perspectives @Aithir , and it takes guts to go against the crowd (I upvoted). What do you think EAs should do differently? Both inside and outside of Anthropic
It’s hard to compromise with an administration which is against even traditional, barebones foreign aid, no? What is the EA movement supposed to do? And that’s not necessarily half of the American political spectrum
The EA movement has a PR problem with basically half the American political spectrum which includes the US President and also Elon Musk whose xAI is currently the fourth most capable American AI company and judging from the comments here, on X and elsewhere the plan seems to be to make it worse. Frankly the discourse isn’t “effective” at all, but virtue signaling.
There are areas where almost unbridgeable tensions between the EA and the MAGA movement exist, but AI alignement really doesn’t have to be one of them.
Effectiveness requires being able to tell the truth, even if it is unpalatable to certain political factions. The actions of Hegseth are unreasonable and set a horrible precedent for companies looking to maintain even the barest of moral principles. Anthropic tried to engage in good faith with the administration and were stabbed in the back over it.
In this case Anthropic chose to supply the DoW via a partnership with a company deeply embedded in the administration’s part of the political spectrum, and even pointedly denied any objections to being used to support the administration’s little expedition in Venezuela, and the administration decided that wasn’t enough. There are many criticisms that can be made of Anthropic’s stance on those issues; reluctance to engage with the current US administration isn’t one of them.
If declining to actively support MAGA’s demands they support development of AI with the explicit purpose of being an autonomous killing device is “virtue signalling”, what’s left of “AI alignment” to pursue?
The most EA leaning AI company just took a major loss and Hegseth specifically called out the movement which strongly suggests that the future won’t be what EAs would like it to be if he or people like him have a say about it which they will.
Why? Because it took the right stance and lost? Because MAGA is bad and dislikes EA? This is what I mean by virtue signaling. I should have been clearer about that in my initial comment.
I would prefer the US to have these capabilities over the US and non democratic-countries or just non-democratic countries having them. Amodei btw. also thinks that it might be necessary in the future to develop such weapons. He said so in this interview. He argues that legislation hasn’t cought up with AI and that in the future Congress should decide on it and not a private company. But if you believe that AI improves on an exponential curve then future legislation will very quickly be even more outdated so that argument doesn’t really make sense to me...
To clarify. I don’t think declaring Anthropic a supply chain risk is justified.
It sure doesn’t look like Anthropic has lost. See https://polymarket.com/event/anthropic-500b-valuation-in-2026 for evidence.
Thanks for raising your concerns.
While I do think that the EA movement should not straight out alienate the MAGA movement, trying to pander to them is a dangerous move. Honestly, attempting a rational discourse with them is very difficult under the current climate, and perhaps even arguably futile. Under conditions like this, maybe the most effective action is to stand your ground (even there iffy things that Anthropic does) and oppose what are they trying to do (at least stop making the problem worse if you can no longer solve it)? Is having a moral bare minimum too much to ask?
This question of whether EA to attempting to win MAGA over reminds me of the current UK political situation (sorry if I get something badly inaccurate): Labour tried to garner the support of the far right and failed horribly cause the far right is going to hate it anyways. On the contrary, the Greens holds its ground and benefits a lot as a result!
Seems difficult to have a good relation to movements that explicitly reject any kind of moral universalism.
I appreciate the different perspectives @Aithir , and it takes guts to go against the crowd (I upvoted). What do you think EAs should do differently? Both inside and outside of Anthropic
It’s hard to compromise with an administration which is against even traditional, barebones foreign aid, no? What is the EA movement supposed to do?
And that’s not necessarily half of the American political spectrum