Speaking as someone who started my country’s local FridaysForFuture, this is basically the same plan I had. If you go to my profile or have seen me at EAG, you’ll know this is an idea I can’t shut up about, because I think it’s super tractable!
Some comments:
I would prioritise finding people to collaborate with. You are currently one person, and finding even one or two other people to work with greatly increases odds of success. I’d be glad to chat more. You are not the first person I’ve heard seriously propose this idea :)
I was also worried about reputation risk, so I went around EAG asking AI Governance people whether the idea made sense. I expected mixed reception, but all the governance people I spoke to were very open to the idea (excited, even). Of course, they said they’d be careful outright supporting it due to reputation risks. However, x-risk activism generally suffers from Pluralistic Ignorance, so cautious openness is the best response I could’ve hoped for anyway.
Re: Fighting for a different cause, I think that’s less concerning than you make it out. In climate advocacy, intersectionality is a fairly common thing. Concepts like decolonisation, climate justice, animal rights and degrowth are all only tangentially related to climate as an x-risk, but they’re well-received anyway. I do not think this specific concern is significant enough to hinder outreach.
Re: Community. The short answer is that I agree. However, I myself made the jump, and I think either having a close friend passionate about the issue, or engaging with active communities/programmes focused on the issue isn’t a super difficult bar to clear.
Re: your plan. That’s basically the exact same plan I have. The difference is that I was going to focus on anti-AI advocates who are gaining traction after Stable Diffusion/ChatGPT. But it would apply to both.
Re: Demonstrations. I half-agree. In activism there’s this informal concept of escalation. Basically you start with very friendly and low-stakes outreach (education, social events, outreach to officials). However, about 90% of people who default to this, are biased against escalating to demonstrations even when it makes sense. For example, Greta Thunberg’s actions would have seemed incredibly counterintuitive to most climate advocates in 2018, and a lot of people also just value activism/ demonstrations at zero or negative because they don’t see the social value. Basically, I hear this often enough that in my mind, the effectiveness of demonstrations is generally always undervalued.
Overall, from my context in climate advocacy, I think people underrate how reasonable others are, especially other high-engaged activists. I expect EAs will be surprised at how receptive climate activists are. Climate activists care a lot about engaging with important ideas and mobilising to do good, and I find they respond (relatively) positively to EA/longtermist ideas. In fact, I know a lot of EAs who used to work in the climate space and entered through other cause areas like animal rights, alt proteins or global poverty alleviation. Like you mentioned, there’s also concepts of regulation, social equity and skepticism of large corporations that could also be leveraged to find common ground.
Anyway, would love to chat with you and anyone else who finds this idea compelling!
Thank you for your supportive comment! Now I see it’s probably not that bad idea.
I sure would like to chat with you too! Feel free to message me. I am very curious about your findings.
I love it!
Speaking as someone who started my country’s local FridaysForFuture, this is basically the same plan I had. If you go to my profile or have seen me at EAG, you’ll know this is an idea I can’t shut up about, because I think it’s super tractable!
Some comments:
I would prioritise finding people to collaborate with. You are currently one person, and finding even one or two other people to work with greatly increases odds of success. I’d be glad to chat more. You are not the first person I’ve heard seriously propose this idea :)
I was also worried about reputation risk, so I went around EAG asking AI Governance people whether the idea made sense. I expected mixed reception, but all the governance people I spoke to were very open to the idea (excited, even). Of course, they said they’d be careful outright supporting it due to reputation risks. However, x-risk activism generally suffers from Pluralistic Ignorance, so cautious openness is the best response I could’ve hoped for anyway.
Re: Fighting for a different cause, I think that’s less concerning than you make it out. In climate advocacy, intersectionality is a fairly common thing. Concepts like decolonisation, climate justice, animal rights and degrowth are all only tangentially related to climate as an x-risk, but they’re well-received anyway. I do not think this specific concern is significant enough to hinder outreach.
Re: Community. The short answer is that I agree. However, I myself made the jump, and I think either having a close friend passionate about the issue, or engaging with active communities/programmes focused on the issue isn’t a super difficult bar to clear.
Re: your plan. That’s basically the exact same plan I have. The difference is that I was going to focus on anti-AI advocates who are gaining traction after Stable Diffusion/ChatGPT. But it would apply to both.
Re: Demonstrations. I half-agree. In activism there’s this informal concept of escalation. Basically you start with very friendly and low-stakes outreach (education, social events, outreach to officials). However, about 90% of people who default to this, are biased against escalating to demonstrations even when it makes sense. For example, Greta Thunberg’s actions would have seemed incredibly counterintuitive to most climate advocates in 2018, and a lot of people also just value activism/ demonstrations at zero or negative because they don’t see the social value. Basically, I hear this often enough that in my mind, the effectiveness of demonstrations is generally always undervalued.
Overall, from my context in climate advocacy, I think people underrate how reasonable others are, especially other high-engaged activists. I expect EAs will be surprised at how receptive climate activists are. Climate activists care a lot about engaging with important ideas and mobilising to do good, and I find they respond (relatively) positively to EA/longtermist ideas. In fact, I know a lot of EAs who used to work in the climate space and entered through other cause areas like animal rights, alt proteins or global poverty alleviation. Like you mentioned, there’s also concepts of regulation, social equity and skepticism of large corporations that could also be leveraged to find common ground.
Anyway, would love to chat with you and anyone else who finds this idea compelling!
Thank you for your supportive comment! Now I see it’s probably not that bad idea. I sure would like to chat with you too! Feel free to message me. I am very curious about your findings.