Thank you for the update and all of the work you’re putting into these events. I know you’re likely busy with EAG Boston, but a few questions when you have the time:
1. Is the decision to run an east coast EAG in 2024 primarily about cost? And if an east coast EAG does happen in 2024, will it definitely be in Boston vs. DC or a cheaper city?
2. If you had 2x or 3x the budget for EAGs, do you think you would organize a cause-neutral EAG in the Bay Area in addition to a GCR conference? How would more funding affect cause-specific vs. big-tent event planning?
3. Do you envision content focused on digital sentience and s-risks at the GCR conference? I’m personally worried that AI risk and biorisk are reducing the airtime for other risks (nuclear war, volcanoes, etc.), including suffering risks. Likewise, I’d still love to see GCR-oriented content focused on topics like how climate change might accelerate certain GCRs, the effects of GCRs on the global poor, the effects of GCRs on nonhuman animals, etc.
(Also, I hope all EAG events remain fully vegan, regardless of the cause area content!)
Thanks for the questions Rocky! Will try to answer them below:
1. On whether to run an east coast EAG: I’d say cost is definitely the biggest factor here, though there are other smaller factors, such as whether a third EAG gets enough unique attendees and the general question of at what point we hit diminishing returns for number of EAGs per year. Re what city it would be hosted in, my guess is that Boston is the most likely option, followed by either NYC or DC, but I’m not sure. My rough sense is that the trade-offs aren’t quite worth it to do the event in a cheaper city because it likely wouldn’t be sufficiently cheaper, though I’m open to it and haven’t thought about this super deeply.
2. If we had a much larger budget I do think we’d at least push harder for a cause-neutral EAGx in the Bay Area (this is something we’re considering anyway, though we’d need to find a team to run the event, as well as funding for it). Though with a much larger budget the thing I’d probably do first is provide more travel grants for our events, as we currently only provide these on a fairly limited basis. I’m not sure that funding would strongly affect our proportions of cause-specific vs big-tent events at this stage, especially as I see the GCR event as a test (and as such am not that keen to run two of them in one year).
3. I’m open to content on digital sentience and s-risks at the GCR EA Global, as well as some of the other sub-topics you mention — and I do expect they would be within the scope of the event. The main question would be whether there are any specific talks or sessions within those areas we’re sufficiently excited about hosting (and whether we think there are high quality and eager speakers who would do these topics justice).
Why is Boston favored over DC? I’d expect DC would have more EAs in general than Boston, plus would open up valuable policy-focused angles of engagement.
The main issue is that some DC-based stakeholders have expressed concern that an EAG DC would draw unwanted attention to their work, partly because EA has negative connotations in certain policy/politics crowds. We’re trying to evaluate how serious these concerns (still) are before making a decision for 2024.
Thank you for the update and all of the work you’re putting into these events. I know you’re likely busy with EAG Boston, but a few questions when you have the time:
1. Is the decision to run an east coast EAG in 2024 primarily about cost? And if an east coast EAG does happen in 2024, will it definitely be in Boston vs. DC or a cheaper city?
2. If you had 2x or 3x the budget for EAGs, do you think you would organize a cause-neutral EAG in the Bay Area in addition to a GCR conference? How would more funding affect cause-specific vs. big-tent event planning?
3. Do you envision content focused on digital sentience and s-risks at the GCR conference? I’m personally worried that AI risk and biorisk are reducing the airtime for other risks (nuclear war, volcanoes, etc.), including suffering risks. Likewise, I’d still love to see GCR-oriented content focused on topics like how climate change might accelerate certain GCRs, the effects of GCRs on the global poor, the effects of GCRs on nonhuman animals, etc.
(Also, I hope all EAG events remain fully vegan, regardless of the cause area content!)
Thanks for the questions Rocky! Will try to answer them below:
1. On whether to run an east coast EAG: I’d say cost is definitely the biggest factor here, though there are other smaller factors, such as whether a third EAG gets enough unique attendees and the general question of at what point we hit diminishing returns for number of EAGs per year. Re what city it would be hosted in, my guess is that Boston is the most likely option, followed by either NYC or DC, but I’m not sure. My rough sense is that the trade-offs aren’t quite worth it to do the event in a cheaper city because it likely wouldn’t be sufficiently cheaper, though I’m open to it and haven’t thought about this super deeply.
2. If we had a much larger budget I do think we’d at least push harder for a cause-neutral EAGx in the Bay Area (this is something we’re considering anyway, though we’d need to find a team to run the event, as well as funding for it). Though with a much larger budget the thing I’d probably do first is provide more travel grants for our events, as we currently only provide these on a fairly limited basis. I’m not sure that funding would strongly affect our proportions of cause-specific vs big-tent events at this stage, especially as I see the GCR event as a test (and as such am not that keen to run two of them in one year).
3. I’m open to content on digital sentience and s-risks at the GCR EA Global, as well as some of the other sub-topics you mention — and I do expect they would be within the scope of the event. The main question would be whether there are any specific talks or sessions within those areas we’re sufficiently excited about hosting (and whether we think there are high quality and eager speakers who would do these topics justice).
Why is Boston favored over DC? I’d expect DC would have more EAs in general than Boston, plus would open up valuable policy-focused angles of engagement.
The main issue is that some DC-based stakeholders have expressed concern that an EAG DC would draw unwanted attention to their work, partly because EA has negative connotations in certain policy/politics crowds. We’re trying to evaluate how serious these concerns (still) are before making a decision for 2024.
I’m also curious about this. Boston is convenient to me as a Cambridge resident, but I’d guess that holding an event in DC would be more valuable.