The best rebuttal to this is that EA regularly tackles “longtermism” causes regularly, on the basis that they can use small bits of influence and money to help address major causes with disproportionate impact. AI is the biggest one the community is interested in.
And this is purely irrational.
The entire fabric of society is set to unravel by, say, next week. There’s a near zero percent chance of anything good happening on any of EAs fronts, including AI. If the government either collapses or becomes unaligned there’s absolutely no reason to think regulations or guidelines on AI will be followed or effective. There are few heuristics we can agree on with AI, but it should be absolutely obvious that an unaligned government creates an unaligned AI, and that government resources are orders of magnitude higher than anyone else.
Hence every cent of money or effort spent by EA on any non political long term cause is meaningless. Even if the money spent couldn’t have mattered if it was political it’s still an example of invalid and irrational spending; worrying about earthquakes while your house is on fire type logic. Nothing was more threatening than the collapse of democracy, including AI, not because AI is theoretically less destructive but because the risk was orders of magnitude more immediate.
Yes, the risk was known. No, pleading ignorance doesn’t absolve anyone.
This could and was predicted a decade ago. Decades if you view EA as an offshoot of the rationalist community and lump their efforts; as early as the “politics is the mind killer” post on less wrong people have been criticizing the de facto political neutrality of the movement, and they were right. I won’t say it’s the original sin, that’s absolutely the obsession with the highly degenerative silicon valley tech sphere at the expense of humanities and social sciences (that could have addressed this too) in recruiting, outreach, and messaging, but it’s up there.
Basically, EA choose political neutrality and what it got was eaten by politics. Now it’s irrelevant. Nothing that’s been done or will be done matters.
The best rebuttal to this is that EA regularly tackles “longtermism” causes regularly, on the basis that they can use small bits of influence and money to help address major causes with disproportionate impact. AI is the biggest one the community is interested in.
And this is purely irrational.
The entire fabric of society is set to unravel by, say, next week. There’s a near zero percent chance of anything good happening on any of EAs fronts, including AI. If the government either collapses or becomes unaligned there’s absolutely no reason to think regulations or guidelines on AI will be followed or effective. There are few heuristics we can agree on with AI, but it should be absolutely obvious that an unaligned government creates an unaligned AI, and that government resources are orders of magnitude higher than anyone else.
Hence every cent of money or effort spent by EA on any non political long term cause is meaningless. Even if the money spent couldn’t have mattered if it was political it’s still an example of invalid and irrational spending; worrying about earthquakes while your house is on fire type logic. Nothing was more threatening than the collapse of democracy, including AI, not because AI is theoretically less destructive but because the risk was orders of magnitude more immediate.
Yes, the risk was known. No, pleading ignorance doesn’t absolve anyone.
This could and was predicted a decade ago. Decades if you view EA as an offshoot of the rationalist community and lump their efforts; as early as the “politics is the mind killer” post on less wrong people have been criticizing the de facto political neutrality of the movement, and they were right. I won’t say it’s the original sin, that’s absolutely the obsession with the highly degenerative silicon valley tech sphere at the expense of humanities and social sciences (that could have addressed this too) in recruiting, outreach, and messaging, but it’s up there.
Basically, EA choose political neutrality and what it got was eaten by politics. Now it’s irrelevant. Nothing that’s been done or will be done matters.
You’ve lost.
EA is a zombie.
It’s dead.