Hi David, oks this is the most enlightening and decision orienting answer I could get. Thanks!
Indeed i came to the Forums through a workshop and had a completely inverted expectative. That the leaders at the EA where conscientious of the AI fad and used that galvanising attention to redirect people to more pressing matters. But from your comment, especially this bit “most, though no doubt not all people you’d think of as EA leaders think AI is the most important cause area to work” really concerns me that the direction of the movement is somehow deceived and will come crashing few years down the road. Still, I hope what is structurally achieved by then might be ‘effective’ enough to survive the encounter with reality.
Disclaimer, I come from theoretical and computational cosmology so I have insight on how over-bloated the topic is compared to realistic prospects—not unlike holography in the 60s and everyday-use of nuclear power in the 50s. Humans, how lovely we are. 2nd disclaimer, now I work on anthropology and cultural loss.
So with that perspective I really need to weight the advantage vs inconvenience. My end game is to preserve and expand cultural diversity, which is a rather unaddressed topic, so to the law of logarithmic returns that this movement profeses I do have some hope of exponential return on focusing on cultural diversity as a theme. Inversely, overly focused on AI related seems logarithmically inefficient, especially in a fad dominated environment—i can cite plenty of research, plus personal experience, already on the later if anybody is interested.
My guess is you might find it hard to find EA people in global development stuff who are particularly interested in preserving/expanding cultural diversity. Generally the people who work on that stuff want to prioritize health, income and economic growth.
Hi David, oks this is the most enlightening and decision orienting answer I could get. Thanks!
Indeed i came to the Forums through a workshop and had a completely inverted expectative. That the leaders at the EA where conscientious of the AI fad and used that galvanising attention to redirect people to more pressing matters. But from your comment, especially this bit “most, though no doubt not all people you’d think of as EA leaders think AI is the most important cause area to work” really concerns me that the direction of the movement is somehow deceived and will come crashing few years down the road. Still, I hope what is structurally achieved by then might be ‘effective’ enough to survive the encounter with reality.
Disclaimer, I come from theoretical and computational cosmology so I have insight on how over-bloated the topic is compared to realistic prospects—not unlike holography in the 60s and everyday-use of nuclear power in the 50s. Humans, how lovely we are. 2nd disclaimer, now I work on anthropology and cultural loss.
So with that perspective I really need to weight the advantage vs inconvenience. My end game is to preserve and expand cultural diversity, which is a rather unaddressed topic, so to the law of logarithmic returns that this movement profeses I do have some hope of exponential return on focusing on cultural diversity as a theme. Inversely, overly focused on AI related seems logarithmically inefficient, especially in a fad dominated environment—i can cite plenty of research, plus personal experience, already on the later if anybody is interested.
My guess is you might find it hard to find EA people in global development stuff who are particularly interested in preserving/expanding cultural diversity. Generally the people who work on that stuff want to prioritize health, income and economic growth.