I agree with your thesis and want to dive deeper into a few historical examples.
The iPhone was a profitable business idea built by Steve Jobs to make money. While it definitely did that, the iPhone (smartphones) also revolutionized how people communicate, significantly increasing the capability of almost everyone in society. There’s a good argument to be made that the proliferation of good smartphones significantly accelerated poverty reduction efforts globally and likely the EA movement itself.
Another example, that we’re seeing come to fruition this decade, is the transition to clean energy and transportation. While perhaps not an X risk, the earth could never sustain human civilization indefinitely with unsustainable energy sources like fossil fuels—especially since burning said fuels at scale is making life more difficult for everyone over time. Having done a great deal of research into renewables and EVs, it’s clear to me that the primary obstacles to solving this problem are energy storage (with batteries being the primary industry), and generation (wind and solar are intermittent, thus energy storage is required).
I think there’s a very strong argument to be made that one company, Tesla, has achieved its goal of accelerating the energy storage industry and the electric vehicle industry by at least a decade, to the massive benefit of humanity. Before they proved the profitability and objective superiority of electric vehicles (2019-now), almost zero global manufacturers of vehicles were planning to transition away from gas cards before 2040 or 2050.
By far the most important bottleneck in the entire transition is the rate and cost at which energy storage (Batteries) could be produced. By bringing EVs to scale, Tesla has brought down the price of batteries from over $1,000 per kWh to about$100 with plans to reach $60 in a few years.
I followed a lot of the development of both of these companies but I was working on grassroots policy advocacy, green new deal type of stuff from 2018-2020. After a while, I realized that all of my impact at a large scale was completely negligible compared to the massive impacts that Tesla was making while also making a ton of money for shareholders.
Tesla and Apple are only two examples, a lot of the major inventions and companies based on those inventions drastically increased the quality of life for millions or billions of people and should not be discounted against charitable purposes. With some new companies, I think it could be far more impactful to join a profitable company that is building infrastructure for the future than a medium-impact charity, but it’s difficult to quantify that.
The one that comes to my mind is Neuralink, which could prove transformative for the entire human experience within 3 decades. While a profitable company, it’s important that they take care to ensure safety from technical problems and corruption problems when proliferating BCIs as it could go very wrong or right. In fact, I think 80,000 hours would be wise to direct as many effective altruists as possible toward Neuralink. It was, after all, created to help humans cognitively catch up with AI such that we can successfully influence it in positive directions and ‘go along for the ride’. It’s a different approach to reducing AI risk that could also prove transformational to human civilization.
Sorry for the lengthy comment, maybe I should make the Neuralink paragraph its own post. I’d love to know what you all think of Neuralink & working at profitable companies making large (hopefully positive) impacts.
Thanks for the comment. You are right that large for-profit Non-EA companies can be better than the direct-impact for-profit companies I wrote about. Whatever the best decision for impact is, one should look at all of their options and decide which is best. Arguably Tesla was started with the intention of doing good (like most of the EA startups mentioned) and Apple wasn’t focused as much on the “social good” rather the good to consumers and business (which is still good but not a focused social thesis). EA doesn’t talk much about working for already large EA-esqe companies, such as Tesla, Neuralink, Spacex, etc. There could be alot of good to be done as an engineer or manager at one of those companies.
Absolutely, I think I misunderstood your differenciation between ‘direct for imact’ and ‘high impact in general’ for-profit companies. Althouth there is certainly a line, part of my thinking comes from the idea that most new companies were created to to solve problems of various sorts. So the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity for profit while also making an impact.
I think there could be a good case for having more EAs trying to get into decision-making levels of management at non-ea for-profit companies. Such priorities could be especially important at social media companies or companies like Neuralink. Imagine the movement-building benefits of EA’s at the top of major social media companies (I guess Elon Musk might sort-of be considered EA adjacent with Twitter)?
I would worry about moral issues and EA image issues by implementing EA ideas in these companies. I was talking about being a great engineer/manager that increases the level of innovation that aligns with the company’s mission. The employees could convince their manager or upper management of certain issues relating to EA, but it is important for them not to try to hijack their company for EA goals against their company’s wishes.
Edit: also see here from the other resources section about what makes a startup high impact. Counterfactual impact is important to consider and the consumer surplus of the product.
I agree with your thesis and want to dive deeper into a few historical examples.
The iPhone was a profitable business idea built by Steve Jobs to make money. While it definitely did that, the iPhone (smartphones) also revolutionized how people communicate, significantly increasing the capability of almost everyone in society. There’s a good argument to be made that the proliferation of good smartphones significantly accelerated poverty reduction efforts globally and likely the EA movement itself.
Another example, that we’re seeing come to fruition this decade, is the transition to clean energy and transportation. While perhaps not an X risk, the earth could never sustain human civilization indefinitely with unsustainable energy sources like fossil fuels—especially since burning said fuels at scale is making life more difficult for everyone over time. Having done a great deal of research into renewables and EVs, it’s clear to me that the primary obstacles to solving this problem are energy storage (with batteries being the primary industry), and generation (wind and solar are intermittent, thus energy storage is required).
I think there’s a very strong argument to be made that one company, Tesla, has achieved its goal of accelerating the energy storage industry and the electric vehicle industry by at least a decade, to the massive benefit of humanity. Before they proved the profitability and objective superiority of electric vehicles (2019-now), almost zero global manufacturers of vehicles were planning to transition away from gas cards before 2040 or 2050.
By far the most important bottleneck in the entire transition is the rate and cost at which energy storage (Batteries) could be produced. By bringing EVs to scale, Tesla has brought down the price of batteries from over $1,000 per kWh to about$100 with plans to reach $60 in a few years.
I followed a lot of the development of both of these companies but I was working on grassroots policy advocacy, green new deal type of stuff from 2018-2020. After a while, I realized that all of my impact at a large scale was completely negligible compared to the massive impacts that Tesla was making while also making a ton of money for shareholders.
Tesla and Apple are only two examples, a lot of the major inventions and companies based on those inventions drastically increased the quality of life for millions or billions of people and should not be discounted against charitable purposes. With some new companies, I think it could be far more impactful to join a profitable company that is building infrastructure for the future than a medium-impact charity, but it’s difficult to quantify that.
The one that comes to my mind is Neuralink, which could prove transformative for the entire human experience within 3 decades. While a profitable company, it’s important that they take care to ensure safety from technical problems and corruption problems when proliferating BCIs as it could go very wrong or right. In fact, I think 80,000 hours would be wise to direct as many effective altruists as possible toward Neuralink. It was, after all, created to help humans cognitively catch up with AI such that we can successfully influence it in positive directions and ‘go along for the ride’. It’s a different approach to reducing AI risk that could also prove transformational to human civilization.
Sorry for the lengthy comment, maybe I should make the Neuralink paragraph its own post. I’d love to know what you all think of Neuralink & working at profitable companies making large (hopefully positive) impacts.
Thanks for the comment. You are right that large for-profit Non-EA companies can be better than the direct-impact for-profit companies I wrote about. Whatever the best decision for impact is, one should look at all of their options and decide which is best. Arguably Tesla was started with the intention of doing good (like most of the EA startups mentioned) and Apple wasn’t focused as much on the “social good” rather the good to consumers and business (which is still good but not a focused social thesis). EA doesn’t talk much about working for already large EA-esqe companies, such as Tesla, Neuralink, Spacex, etc. There could be alot of good to be done as an engineer or manager at one of those companies.
Absolutely, I think I misunderstood your differenciation between ‘direct for imact’ and ‘high impact in general’ for-profit companies. Althouth there is certainly a line, part of my thinking comes from the idea that most new companies were created to to solve problems of various sorts. So the bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity for profit while also making an impact.
I think there could be a good case for having more EAs trying to get into decision-making levels of management at non-ea for-profit companies. Such priorities could be especially important at social media companies or companies like Neuralink. Imagine the movement-building benefits of EA’s at the top of major social media companies (I guess Elon Musk might sort-of be considered EA adjacent with Twitter)?
I would worry about moral issues and EA image issues by implementing EA ideas in these companies. I was talking about being a great engineer/manager that increases the level of innovation that aligns with the company’s mission. The employees could convince their manager or upper management of certain issues relating to EA, but it is important for them not to try to hijack their company for EA goals against their company’s wishes.
Edit: also see here from the other resources section about what makes a startup high impact. Counterfactual impact is important to consider and the consumer surplus of the product.