Thank you for posting this! I’ve been frustrated with the EA movement’s cautiousness around media outreach for a while. I think that the overwhelmingly negative press coverage in recent weeks can be attributed in part to us not doing enough media outreach prior to the FTX collapse. And it was pointed out back in July that the top Google Search result for “longtermism” was a Torres hit piece.
I understand and agree with the view that media outreach should be done by specialists—ideally, people who deeply understand EA and know how to talk to the media. But Will MacAskill and Toby Ord aren’t the only people with those qualifications! There’s no reason they need to be the public face of all of EA—they represent one faction out of at least three. EA is a general concept that’s compatible with a range of moral and empirical worldviews—we should be showcasing that epistemic diversity, and one way to do that is by empowering an ideologically diverse group of public figures and media specialists to speak on the movement’s behalf. It would be harder for people to criticize EA as a concept if they knew how broad it was.
Perhaps more EA orgs—like GiveWell, ACE, and FHI—should have their own publicity arms that operate independently of CEA and promote their views to the public, instead of expecting CEA or a handful of public figures like MacAskill to do the heavy lifting.
Perhaps more EA orgs—like GiveWell, ACE, and FHI—should have their own publicity arms that operate independently of CEA
I think GiveWell (at least, and maybe ACE too) is already very independent of CEA. The fact that they also haven’t done mass media outreach is probably a result of an independent assessment that it isn’t particularly in their interests to do so. They do have significant marketing and media outreach, e.g. I’ve seen YouTube sponsorships, and I know they’re on podcasts sometimes, so I feel safe guessing that media exposure they haven’t had is because they haven’t pursued it rather than because they don’t have the expertise to do so.
There’s an unfortunate dynamic which has occurred around discussions of longtermism outside EA. Within EA, we have a debate about whether it’s better to donate to nearterm vs longterm charities. A lot of critical outsider discussion on longtermism ends up taking the nearterm side of our internal debate: “Those terrible longtermists want you to fund speculative Silicon Valley projects instead of giving to the world’s poorest!”
But for people outside EA, nearterm charity vs longterm charity is generally the wrong counterfactual. Most people outside EA don’t give 10% of their earnings to any effective charity. Most AI work outside EA is focused on making money or producing “cool” results, not mitigating disaster or planning for the long-term benefit of humanity.
Practically all EAs agree people should give 10% of their earnings to effective developing-world charities instead of 1% to ineffective developed-world ones. And practically all EAs agree that AI development should be done with significantly more thought and care. (I think even Émile Torres may agree on that! Could someone ask?)
It’s unfortunate that the internal nearterm vs longterm debate gets so much coverage, given that what we agree on is way more action-relevant to outsiders.
In any case, I mention this because it could play into your “ideologically diverse group of public figures” point somehow. Your idea seems interesting, but I also don’t like the idea of amplifying internal debates further. I would love to see public statements like “Even though I have cause prioritization disagreements with Person X, y’all should really do as they suggest!” And acquiring a norm of using the media to gain leverage in internal debates seems pretty bad.
Yeah, it’s the narcissism of small differences. If we’re gonna emphasize our diversity more, we should also emphasize our unity. The narrative could be “EA is a framework for how to apply morality, and it’s compatible with several moral systems.”
Perhaps more EA orgs—like GiveWell, ACE, and FHI—should have their own publicity arms that operate independently of CEA and promote their views to the public, instead of expecting CEA or a handful of public figures like MacAskill to do the heavy lifting.
More spending and effort placed into publicity arms makes sense. Less cohesion and coordination is a hard sell though, that’s more points of failure at best, and at worst risks exploitation/playing both sides by clever outsiders, or inter-org conflict/retaliation that is triggered by accident instead of deliberately.
There needs to at least be an apparatus for negotiation.
Thank you for posting this! I’ve been frustrated with the EA movement’s cautiousness around media outreach for a while. I think that the overwhelmingly negative press coverage in recent weeks can be attributed in part to us not doing enough media outreach prior to the FTX collapse. And it was pointed out back in July that the top Google Search result for “longtermism” was a Torres hit piece.
I understand and agree with the view that media outreach should be done by specialists—ideally, people who deeply understand EA and know how to talk to the media. But Will MacAskill and Toby Ord aren’t the only people with those qualifications! There’s no reason they need to be the public face of all of EA—they represent one faction out of at least three. EA is a general concept that’s compatible with a range of moral and empirical worldviews—we should be showcasing that epistemic diversity, and one way to do that is by empowering an ideologically diverse group of public figures and media specialists to speak on the movement’s behalf. It would be harder for people to criticize EA as a concept if they knew how broad it was.
Perhaps more EA orgs—like GiveWell, ACE, and FHI—should have their own publicity arms that operate independently of CEA and promote their views to the public, instead of expecting CEA or a handful of public figures like MacAskill to do the heavy lifting.
I think GiveWell (at least, and maybe ACE too) is already very independent of CEA. The fact that they also haven’t done mass media outreach is probably a result of an independent assessment that it isn’t particularly in their interests to do so. They do have significant marketing and media outreach, e.g. I’ve seen YouTube sponsorships, and I know they’re on podcasts sometimes, so I feel safe guessing that media exposure they haven’t had is because they haven’t pursued it rather than because they don’t have the expertise to do so.
Great points.
There’s an unfortunate dynamic which has occurred around discussions of longtermism outside EA. Within EA, we have a debate about whether it’s better to donate to nearterm vs longterm charities. A lot of critical outsider discussion on longtermism ends up taking the nearterm side of our internal debate: “Those terrible longtermists want you to fund speculative Silicon Valley projects instead of giving to the world’s poorest!”
But for people outside EA, nearterm charity vs longterm charity is generally the wrong counterfactual. Most people outside EA don’t give 10% of their earnings to any effective charity. Most AI work outside EA is focused on making money or producing “cool” results, not mitigating disaster or planning for the long-term benefit of humanity.
Practically all EAs agree people should give 10% of their earnings to effective developing-world charities instead of 1% to ineffective developed-world ones. And practically all EAs agree that AI development should be done with significantly more thought and care. (I think even Émile Torres may agree on that! Could someone ask?)
It’s unfortunate that the internal nearterm vs longterm debate gets so much coverage, given that what we agree on is way more action-relevant to outsiders.
In any case, I mention this because it could play into your “ideologically diverse group of public figures” point somehow. Your idea seems interesting, but I also don’t like the idea of amplifying internal debates further. I would love to see public statements like “Even though I have cause prioritization disagreements with Person X, y’all should really do as they suggest!” And acquiring a norm of using the media to gain leverage in internal debates seems pretty bad.
Yeah, it’s the narcissism of small differences. If we’re gonna emphasize our diversity more, we should also emphasize our unity. The narrative could be “EA is a framework for how to apply morality, and it’s compatible with several moral systems.”
More spending and effort placed into publicity arms makes sense. Less cohesion and coordination is a hard sell though, that’s more points of failure at best, and at worst risks exploitation/playing both sides by clever outsiders, or inter-org conflict/retaliation that is triggered by accident instead of deliberately.
There needs to at least be an apparatus for negotiation.