I wonder if that’s where some effort could go, given you’re trying to build a field that hinges on persuading people of the gravity and impact of changes that need to happen now, with time-sensitive urgency.
I’m not entirely certain that this is the case. There is always a tradeoff on what you choose to spend your time on. We aren’t trying to convince the public or even other EAs or animal advocates as our main ToC. We are trying to grow more fertile ground for the people who are already interested and convinced to be able to have the connections, knowledge, and resources they need in order to pursue their own interventions. A lot of our comms happens inside our Slack community (which is intentionally high friction to join) and even then, most of it is in private channels. Here are the Slack stats from the last month: 9,388 Messages from members, 4%In public channels, 32% In private channels, 64% In direct messages.
And it seems like there are already some external communication pieces coming out from groups like Animal Ethics (see this short documentary) for animal advocates and @Max Taylor is writing a book for the public.
We are pretty heads down on the operations of field building, which is much more manageable with a smaller, niche audience to start off with. Even then, we have more inbound interest than we can handle (we were only able to accept ~100/300 applicants to our fall AIxAnimals course and then had to work pretty hard to expand that to ~200/300 for this spring). I’ve experienced the mistake too many times where I’ve tried to advertise more widely or engage with people that have lower context on what I’m working on and it is really time consuming and has less leverage than say putting on a well organized conference (see this retro) that pulls in people who already have high context and then get ideas and connections to do things like the documentary or the book I mentioned above.
It may not seem obvious that this is a good field building technique, but I think focusing in on an existing core community rather than external communications is much higher leverage given the current capacity constraints we have. It’s like making sure the grass is mature before you invite a bunch of people to come play in your park.
You and other folks are very welcome to come to our project incubator showcase next week! For 8 weeks, ~40 groups of mentors and mentees have been working on projects to push the frontier of tech and nonhuman welfare. It is a totally new program so it has taken up a lot of our time.
I think when inbounds start to dry up, that would be a signal we need to focus more on external comms, but right now it seems like there are others that are happy to take on that job and there is a lot of active work being done to narrow in on AIxAnimals interventions, making any official comms about reasoning that we put out at risk of getting stale pretty fast. That’s a big part of why the website sounds so generic.
That said, once things calm down and we have stable, repeating programs, I do think our website copy could use some refreshing.
Are there any other win-win situations have been found and packaged so far, beyond the EU AI Act?
Nothing as concrete. Just other things that build the field like people having counterfactual value or having a bunch of conversations, some of which change people’s minds. Another potential policy thing (which other EA’s seem to hate because they think it is low impact and not very counterfactual) is trying to make sure animals are included in safety regulations for self driving vehicles.
Ok, my updated understanding is that Sentient Futures is primarily focused on field-building, with a view to supporting interventions as they emerge over time.
One thing I’m still trying to get a better grip on is how this translates into impact on animals, and ideally, on what timescale. I’ve had similar questions when thinking about wild animal welfare more broadly: when does investment in building a field start to produce concrete outcomes that benefit animals?
In the AI x animals case, it seems slightly more pressing because of the time-sensitivity point. I’m trying to reconcile the idea that ‘this is urgent’ with an approach that is upstream and preparatory.
I’m also conscious that most of what I’m seeing is the public-facing layer, and you mentioned that a lot of the communication is happening in more private or high-context settings; so it may be that the picture looks more abstract from the outside than it does from within.
Thanks for the invite. I’ll join the showcase. Looking forward to seeing what interventions are being worked on.
I’m not entirely certain that this is the case. There is always a tradeoff on what you choose to spend your time on. We aren’t trying to convince the public or even other EAs or animal advocates as our main ToC. We are trying to grow more fertile ground for the people who are already interested and convinced to be able to have the connections, knowledge, and resources they need in order to pursue their own interventions. A lot of our comms happens inside our Slack community (which is intentionally high friction to join) and even then, most of it is in private channels. Here are the Slack stats from the last month: 9,388 Messages from members, 4%In public channels, 32% In private channels, 64% In direct messages.
And it seems like there are already some external communication pieces coming out from groups like Animal Ethics (see this short documentary) for animal advocates and @Max Taylor is writing a book for the public.
We are pretty heads down on the operations of field building, which is much more manageable with a smaller, niche audience to start off with. Even then, we have more inbound interest than we can handle (we were only able to accept ~100/300 applicants to our fall AIxAnimals course and then had to work pretty hard to expand that to ~200/300 for this spring). I’ve experienced the mistake too many times where I’ve tried to advertise more widely or engage with people that have lower context on what I’m working on and it is really time consuming and has less leverage than say putting on a well organized conference (see this retro) that pulls in people who already have high context and then get ideas and connections to do things like the documentary or the book I mentioned above.
It may not seem obvious that this is a good field building technique, but I think focusing in on an existing core community rather than external communications is much higher leverage given the current capacity constraints we have. It’s like making sure the grass is mature before you invite a bunch of people to come play in your park.
You and other folks are very welcome to come to our project incubator showcase next week! For 8 weeks, ~40 groups of mentors and mentees have been working on projects to push the frontier of tech and nonhuman welfare. It is a totally new program so it has taken up a lot of our time.
Then we are rolling right into our 6th conference and our 1st in-person residency program.
I think when inbounds start to dry up, that would be a signal we need to focus more on external comms, but right now it seems like there are others that are happy to take on that job and there is a lot of active work being done to narrow in on AIxAnimals interventions, making any official comms about reasoning that we put out at risk of getting stale pretty fast. That’s a big part of why the website sounds so generic.
That said, once things calm down and we have stable, repeating programs, I do think our website copy could use some refreshing.
Are there any other win-win situations have been found and packaged so far, beyond the EU AI Act?
Nothing as concrete. Just other things that build the field like people having counterfactual value or having a bunch of conversations, some of which change people’s minds. Another potential policy thing (which other EA’s seem to hate because they think it is low impact and not very counterfactual) is trying to make sure animals are included in safety regulations for self driving vehicles.
Ok, my updated understanding is that Sentient Futures is primarily focused on field-building, with a view to supporting interventions as they emerge over time.
One thing I’m still trying to get a better grip on is how this translates into impact on animals, and ideally, on what timescale. I’ve had similar questions when thinking about wild animal welfare more broadly: when does investment in building a field start to produce concrete outcomes that benefit animals?
In the AI x animals case, it seems slightly more pressing because of the time-sensitivity point. I’m trying to reconcile the idea that ‘this is urgent’ with an approach that is upstream and preparatory.
I’m also conscious that most of what I’m seeing is the public-facing layer, and you mentioned that a lot of the communication is happening in more private or high-context settings; so it may be that the picture looks more abstract from the outside than it does from within.
Thanks for the invite. I’ll join the showcase. Looking forward to seeing what interventions are being worked on.