As someone who is extremely pro investing in big-tent EA, my question is, āwhat does it look like, in practice, to implement āAI safety...should have its own movement, separate from EAā?ā
I do think it is extremely important to maintain EA as a movement centered on the general idea of doing as much good as we can with limited resources. There is serious risk of AIS eating EA, but the answer to that cannot be to carve AIS out of EA. If people come to prioritize AIS from EA principles, as I do, I think it would be anathema to the movement to try to push their actions and movement building outside the EA umbrella. In addition, EA being ahead of the curve on AIS is, in my opinion, a fact to embrace and treat as evidence of the value of EA principles, individuals, and movement building methodology.
To avoid AIS eating EA, we have to keep reinvesting in EA fundamentals. I am so grateful and impressed that Dave published this post, because itās exactly the kind of effort that I think is necessary to keep EA EA. I think he highlights specific failures in exploiting known methods of inducing epistemic ā¦ untetheredness?
For example, I worked with CFAR where the workshops deliberately employed the same intensive atmosphere to get people to be receptive to new ways of thinking and being actually open to changing their minds. I recognized that this was inherently risky, and was always impressed that the ideas introduced in this state were always about how to think better rather than convince workshop participants of any conclusion. Despite many of the staff and mentors being extremely convinced of the necessity of x-risk mitigation, I never once encountered discussion of how the rationality techniques should be applied to AIS.
To hear that this type of environment is de facto being used to sway people towards a cause prioritization, rather than how to do cause prio makes me update significantly away from continuing the university pipeline as it currently exists. The comments on the funding situation are also new to me and seem to represent obvious errors. Thanks again Dave for opening my eyes to whatās currently happening.
āwhat does it look like, in practice, to implement āAI safety...should have its own movement, separate from EAā?ā
Creating AI Safety focused Conferences, AI Safety university groups and AI Safety local meet-up groups? Obviously attendees will initially overlap very heavily with EA conferences and groups but having them separated out will lead to a bit of divergence over time
Wouldnāt this run the risk of worsening the lack of intellectual diversity and epistemic health that the post mentions? The growing divide between long/āneartermism might have led to tensions, but Iām happy that at least thereās still conferences, groups and meet-ups where these different people are still talking to each other!
There might be an important trade-off here, and itās not clear to me what direction makes more sense.
I am all for efforts to do AIS movement building distinct from EA movement building by people who are convinced by AIS reasoning and not swayed by EA principles. Thereās all kinds of discussion about AIS in academic/āprofessional/āmedia circles that never reference EA at all. And while Iād love for everyone involved to learn about and embrace EA, Iām not expecting that. So Iām just glad theyāre doing their thing and hope theyāre doing it well.
I could probably have asked the question better and made it, āwhat should EAs do (if anything), in practice to implement a separate AIS movement?ā Because then it sounds like weāre talking about making a choice to divert movement building dollars and hours away from EA movement building to distinct AI safety movement building, under the theoretical guise of trying to bolster the EA movement against getting eaten by AIS? Seems obviously backwards to me. I think EA movement building is already under-resourced, and owning our relationship with AIS is the best strategic choice to achieve broad EA goals and AIS goals.
As someone who is extremely pro investing in big-tent EA, my question is, āwhat does it look like, in practice, to implement āAI safety...should have its own movement, separate from EAā?ā
I do think it is extremely important to maintain EA as a movement centered on the general idea of doing as much good as we can with limited resources. There is serious risk of AIS eating EA, but the answer to that cannot be to carve AIS out of EA. If people come to prioritize AIS from EA principles, as I do, I think it would be anathema to the movement to try to push their actions and movement building outside the EA umbrella. In addition, EA being ahead of the curve on AIS is, in my opinion, a fact to embrace and treat as evidence of the value of EA principles, individuals, and movement building methodology.
To avoid AIS eating EA, we have to keep reinvesting in EA fundamentals. I am so grateful and impressed that Dave published this post, because itās exactly the kind of effort that I think is necessary to keep EA EA. I think he highlights specific failures in exploiting known methods of inducing epistemic ā¦ untetheredness?
For example, I worked with CFAR where the workshops deliberately employed the same intensive atmosphere to get people to be receptive to new ways of thinking and being actually open to changing their minds. I recognized that this was inherently risky, and was always impressed that the ideas introduced in this state were always about how to think better rather than convince workshop participants of any conclusion. Despite many of the staff and mentors being extremely convinced of the necessity of x-risk mitigation, I never once encountered discussion of how the rationality techniques should be applied to AIS.
To hear that this type of environment is de facto being used to sway people towards a cause prioritization, rather than how to do cause prio makes me update significantly away from continuing the university pipeline as it currently exists. The comments on the funding situation are also new to me and seem to represent obvious errors. Thanks again Dave for opening my eyes to whatās currently happening.
āwhat does it look like, in practice, to implement āAI safety...should have its own movement, separate from EAā?ā
Creating AI Safety focused Conferences, AI Safety university groups and AI Safety local meet-up groups? Obviously attendees will initially overlap very heavily with EA conferences and groups but having them separated out will lead to a bit of divergence over time
Wouldnāt this run the risk of worsening the lack of intellectual diversity and epistemic health that the post mentions? The growing divide between long/āneartermism might have led to tensions, but Iām happy that at least thereās still conferences, groups and meet-ups where these different people are still talking to each other!
There might be an important trade-off here, and itās not clear to me what direction makes more sense.
I donāt think thereās much of a trade-off, Iād expect a decent proportion of AI Safety people to still be coming to EA conferences
I am all for efforts to do AIS movement building distinct from EA movement building by people who are convinced by AIS reasoning and not swayed by EA principles. Thereās all kinds of discussion about AIS in academic/āprofessional/āmedia circles that never reference EA at all. And while Iād love for everyone involved to learn about and embrace EA, Iām not expecting that. So Iām just glad theyāre doing their thing and hope theyāre doing it well.
I could probably have asked the question better and made it, āwhat should EAs do (if anything), in practice to implement a separate AIS movement?ā Because then it sounds like weāre talking about making a choice to divert movement building dollars and hours away from EA movement building to distinct AI safety movement building, under the theoretical guise of trying to bolster the EA movement against getting eaten by AIS? Seems obviously backwards to me. I think EA movement building is already under-resourced, and owning our relationship with AIS is the best strategic choice to achieve broad EA goals and AIS goals.