I started my EA journy at Giving What We Can, encouraging others to pledge to give 10% of their income to effective charities. I got into allt his because I thought it was basically insane that you could save a life for $5k. I still do, but now Iâm working in AI, where thereâs significant amounts of funding available, powerful people involved and interested, the stakes are existential, I feel like my scope sensitivty cannot keep up anymore. So lot of what youâre saying resonates.
I think EAâs failure to grapple with the corrupting influence of power is among its greatest failures.
I both agree with this in the abstract and also feel pretty clueless about what grappling with this would look like. I worry that one way to grapple with it is to try to avoid it and flee to a place with less moral ambiguity, but also at the cost impact. Iâd be interested in your thoughts on what it would look like for people who are wielding that power to take seriously its corrupting influence.
I definitely agreeâI have this sense of âam I complaining about something real, or is this just nostalgia for an inevitable change that comes with more funding?â
I also donât really have good answers here on what to do about it. A slightly hesitant/âlow-confidence thought (because Iâm recommending Continental philosophy on the EA Forum) is that I think Distinction is the best book for thinking about EA-as-a-social-scene, and think Distinction-y/âSpheres of Justice-style interventions are probably going to be the best ones (reduce the number of spheres of power individuals have â i.e. try to not give people who have lots of financial resources greater cultural/âsocial power, try to not give people who have cultural/âsocial power lots of financial resources, donât reinforce norms of âcultural eliteâ within EA in the pipelines for new people, etc). But I think this is quite hard to do, especially from the bottom up.
Hi Michael, I liked this comment a lot, strongly upvoted.
If I were to give a few suggestions off the top of my head:
It often feels like AISâs answer to get what they want, especially faster, is to simply throw more money at the problem. Salary raises, perks, nicer spaces, fancier events, etc. I think money is perhaps one knob to turn, but Iâd like to see other knobs turned as well: creativity, working a lot longer/âharder (sacrifices of free time), etc. Importantly, I donât want these to be inane (spend 1 week per year in Malawi living like the poorest people on Earth). If people had the sense that AIS people got paid well but were really burning the midnight candle, I think the common man (or parts of EA which arenât as flush with cash) would have less disdain for them.
Abraham kind of mentions this, but maybe any kind of costly signal (or rather, hard-to-fake signal).
Donât spend money just because you can. It often feels like money in AIS is spent sort of recklessly, because itâs in excess rather than âyeah, thereâs an actual need for this thingâ, and thus it doesnât really matter.
Donât make âmoney movedâ the metric for AI safety. It often seems to be. And itâs probably convenient. But itâs pretty easy to move money. Itâs harder to move money well.
Just a lot more public writing of thought processes. It seems that more and more AIS is done in private Google Docs and Slack channels, and just occasionally, clearly public-facing posts are made, and itâs very clear that âthis is what the masses get to know, the professionals will manage the real stuffâ. The original name of Coefficient Giving was âOpen Philanthropyâ. Supposedly, it was changed to not be conflated with OpenAI, but a more cynical view (which I donât believe) would be that it was done to be more accurate in the shift that had taken place and will continue to take place. Thereâs a similar case with Edward Snowden where he made the point that by default, everything in the government is classified even though it ought not be. It often feels like CG sees itself as the âsteward of AIS,â where everyone else should do the thing they are told.
Perhaps another thing Iâd like to see is just frankly less pompousness around âI am one of the most important/âeffective people in the world, doing great things for the world, having lots of impactâ. I get the sense that many think itâs true, but itâs a bit hard to prove and comes across a little thick when itâs paired with what looks on the outside to be a rather comfortable-looking job with great perks/âevents.
Thanks for the kind words :) and appreciate the concreteness of these suggestions.
I think many of these seem to have a common thread of: treating money as a valuable resource, viewing profligacy as costly (both financially and to the soul), seeing signals of dedication and altruism as especially valuable, and generally being pro transparency.
I agree with all of these, though I think itâs difficult to know how to weigh them against the things they sometimes trade-off against. For instance, if youâre deciding whether to fund a large and potentially very impactful grant opportunity that involves high salaries, where the details of the grant are sensitive, it feels unclear to me how much impact there has to be on the table to justify the high salaries and discretion the grant involves. Iâm pulled towards posts like this, though I likewise feel some pull towards the ideas Will discussed in the EA and the current funding situation (or at least my memory of it, which is that in some cases itâs worth setting aside our preference for an ascetic aesthetic when resources are more plentiful and the worldâs problems are urgent.)
The thing Iâm especially curious about is exactly how power and influence can start corrupting oneâs thinking, and what ways there are of avoiding that (to the extent there are any).
Thanks for writing this.
I started my EA journy at Giving What We Can, encouraging others to pledge to give 10% of their income to effective charities. I got into allt his because I thought it was basically insane that you could save a life for $5k. I still do, but now Iâm working in AI, where thereâs significant amounts of funding available, powerful people involved and interested, the stakes are existential, I feel like my scope sensitivty cannot keep up anymore. So lot of what youâre saying resonates.
I both agree with this in the abstract and also feel pretty clueless about what grappling with this would look like. I worry that one way to grapple with it is to try to avoid it and flee to a place with less moral ambiguity, but also at the cost impact. Iâd be interested in your thoughts on what it would look like for people who are wielding that power to take seriously its corrupting influence.
Thanks Michael!
I definitely agreeâI have this sense of âam I complaining about something real, or is this just nostalgia for an inevitable change that comes with more funding?â
I also donât really have good answers here on what to do about it. A slightly hesitant/âlow-confidence thought (because Iâm recommending Continental philosophy on the EA Forum) is that I think Distinction is the best book for thinking about EA-as-a-social-scene, and think Distinction-y/âSpheres of Justice-style interventions are probably going to be the best ones (reduce the number of spheres of power individuals have â i.e. try to not give people who have lots of financial resources greater cultural/âsocial power, try to not give people who have cultural/âsocial power lots of financial resources, donât reinforce norms of âcultural eliteâ within EA in the pipelines for new people, etc). But I think this is quite hard to do, especially from the bottom up.
Hi Michael, I liked this comment a lot, strongly upvoted.
If I were to give a few suggestions off the top of my head:
It often feels like AISâs answer to get what they want, especially faster, is to simply throw more money at the problem. Salary raises, perks, nicer spaces, fancier events, etc. I think money is perhaps one knob to turn, but Iâd like to see other knobs turned as well: creativity, working a lot longer/âharder (sacrifices of free time), etc. Importantly, I donât want these to be inane (spend 1 week per year in Malawi living like the poorest people on Earth). If people had the sense that AIS people got paid well but were really burning the midnight candle, I think the common man (or parts of EA which arenât as flush with cash) would have less disdain for them.
Abraham kind of mentions this, but maybe any kind of costly signal (or rather, hard-to-fake signal).
Donât spend money just because you can. It often feels like money in AIS is spent sort of recklessly, because itâs in excess rather than âyeah, thereâs an actual need for this thingâ, and thus it doesnât really matter.
Donât make âmoney movedâ the metric for AI safety. It often seems to be. And itâs probably convenient. But itâs pretty easy to move money. Itâs harder to move money well.
Just a lot more public writing of thought processes. It seems that more and more AIS is done in private Google Docs and Slack channels, and just occasionally, clearly public-facing posts are made, and itâs very clear that âthis is what the masses get to know, the professionals will manage the real stuffâ. The original name of Coefficient Giving was âOpen Philanthropyâ. Supposedly, it was changed to not be conflated with OpenAI, but a more cynical view (which I donât believe) would be that it was done to be more accurate in the shift that had taken place and will continue to take place. Thereâs a similar case with Edward Snowden where he made the point that by default, everything in the government is classified even though it ought not be. It often feels like CG sees itself as the âsteward of AIS,â where everyone else should do the thing they are told.
Perhaps another thing Iâd like to see is just frankly less pompousness around âI am one of the most important/âeffective people in the world, doing great things for the world, having lots of impactâ. I get the sense that many think itâs true, but itâs a bit hard to prove and comes across a little thick when itâs paired with what looks on the outside to be a rather comfortable-looking job with great perks/âevents.
This piece by Lincoln Quirk really comes to mind
Thanks for the kind words :) and appreciate the concreteness of these suggestions.
I think many of these seem to have a common thread of: treating money as a valuable resource, viewing profligacy as costly (both financially and to the soul), seeing signals of dedication and altruism as especially valuable, and generally being pro transparency.
I agree with all of these, though I think itâs difficult to know how to weigh them against the things they sometimes trade-off against. For instance, if youâre deciding whether to fund a large and potentially very impactful grant opportunity that involves high salaries, where the details of the grant are sensitive, it feels unclear to me how much impact there has to be on the table to justify the high salaries and discretion the grant involves. Iâm pulled towards posts like this, though I likewise feel some pull towards the ideas Will discussed in the EA and the current funding situation (or at least my memory of it, which is that in some cases itâs worth setting aside our preference for an ascetic aesthetic when resources are more plentiful and the worldâs problems are urgent.)
The thing Iâm especially curious about is exactly how power and influence can start corrupting oneâs thinking, and what ways there are of avoiding that (to the extent there are any).