Immense, undemocratic political spending is ramping up (though spending by the enemies of AI safety is also growing)
You present the parenthetical as a meliorating factor, but I expect that these enemies exist due to previous undemocratic power-seeking actions by the AI safety community.
(This isn’t based on any private information, I just think there must be some reason these enemies single out EAs in particular. Bad faith actors don’t just randomly pick targets to attack. My best guess at the reason is the intense focus on gaining influence and power.)
While I admire your instinct to extend grace to your enemies, I think you’re bending too far backwards and attributing to them too much good faith. As one point of evidence that they’ll say anything they think will help them win, consider their use of Lonsdale money to accuse Bores of being too cozy with Palantir.
Fair! My point is that while I don’t think they randomly pick targets to attack, I don’t think their target-selection rubric is at all calibrated to who is actually bad or good. I think they attack EA because they think that’ll help them win, and they would do that even if EA were not seeking power and influence.
You present the parenthetical as a meliorating factor, but I expect that these enemies exist due to previous undemocratic power-seeking actions by the AI safety community.
(This isn’t based on any private information, I just think there must be some reason these enemies single out EAs in particular. Bad faith actors don’t just randomly pick targets to attack. My best guess at the reason is the intense focus on gaining influence and power.)
While I admire your instinct to extend grace to your enemies, I think you’re bending too far backwards and attributing to them too much good faith. As one point of evidence that they’ll say anything they think will help them win, consider their use of Lonsdale money to accuse Bores of being too cozy with Palantir.
… I explicitly called them bad faith actors in my comment; I don’t think I’m extending much grace to them.
In any case, whether or not they are acting in bad faith doesn’t have much bearing (for me anyway) on whether EA actions have been good.
Fair! My point is that while I don’t think they randomly pick targets to attack, I don’t think their target-selection rubric is at all calibrated to who is actually bad or good. I think they attack EA because they think that’ll help them win, and they would do that even if EA were not seeking power and influence.