Thanks for this assertive, candid, blunt, challenging post.
You and I have, I think, reached similar views on some of the critical weaknesses of EA as it’s currently led, run, funded, and defended.
All too often, ‘EA discourse norms’ have been overly influenced by LessWrong discourse norms, where an ivory-tower fetishization of ‘rational discourse’, ‘finding cruxes’, ‘updating priors’, ‘avoiding ad hominems’, ‘steel-manning arguments’, etc becomes a substitute for effective social or political action in the world as it is, given human nature as it is, and given the existential risks that we actually face.
And, recently, way too many EAs have been seduced into the Dario Amodei delusion that if the ‘good guys’ build Artificial Superintelligence, with good intentions, and enough effort on ‘technical AI alignment’, we’ll all be fine.
That’s a great excuse for EAs going over to 80k Hours, which still (unbelievably, and utterly immorally) posts dozens of ‘AI safety’ jobs at Anthropic and OpenAI, and getting that sweet, sweet salary to live in the Bay Area, hang out with the cool kids, and pretend you’re doing good. (When, in fact, you’re being used as a safety-washing prop by some of the most reckless corporations on Earth.)
People respond to incentives. Even EAs.
And if your prospects of being hired by Anthropic for a mid-6-figure salary doing corporate safety-washing depend on not making a fuss, and denouncing Pause AI, and ignoring the passion and dedication of those who believe ASI is actually an extinction risk, then it’s tempting to many EAs to ignore your message, downvote your post (and probably this one), and carry on as usual, feeling virtue about donating a bit of money to saving some shrimp, or whatever.
Holly --
Thanks for this assertive, candid, blunt, challenging post.
You and I have, I think, reached similar views on some of the critical weaknesses of EA as it’s currently led, run, funded, and defended.
All too often, ‘EA discourse norms’ have been overly influenced by LessWrong discourse norms, where an ivory-tower fetishization of ‘rational discourse’, ‘finding cruxes’, ‘updating priors’, ‘avoiding ad hominems’, ‘steel-manning arguments’, etc becomes a substitute for effective social or political action in the world as it is, given human nature as it is, and given the existential risks that we actually face.
And, recently, way too many EAs have been seduced into the Dario Amodei delusion that if the ‘good guys’ build Artificial Superintelligence, with good intentions, and enough effort on ‘technical AI alignment’, we’ll all be fine.
That’s a great excuse for EAs going over to 80k Hours, which still (unbelievably, and utterly immorally) posts dozens of ‘AI safety’ jobs at Anthropic and OpenAI, and getting that sweet, sweet salary to live in the Bay Area, hang out with the cool kids, and pretend you’re doing good. (When, in fact, you’re being used as a safety-washing prop by some of the most reckless corporations on Earth.)
People respond to incentives. Even EAs.
And if your prospects of being hired by Anthropic for a mid-6-figure salary doing corporate safety-washing depend on not making a fuss, and denouncing Pause AI, and ignoring the passion and dedication of those who believe ASI is actually an extinction risk, then it’s tempting to many EAs to ignore your message, downvote your post (and probably this one), and carry on as usual, feeling virtue about donating a bit of money to saving some shrimp, or whatever.