There is going to be a Netflix series on SBF titled The Altruists, so EA will be back in the media. I donāt know how EA will be portrayed in the show, but regardless, now is a great time to improve EA communications. More specifically, being a lot more loud about historical and current EA wins ā we just donāt talk about them enough!
Julia Garner (Ozark, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Inventing Anna) and Anthony Boyle (House of Guinness, Say Nothing, Masters of the Air) are set to star in The Altruists, a new eight-episode limited series about Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.
Graham Moore (The Imitation Game, The Outfit) and Jacqueline Hoyt (The Underground Railroad, Dietland, Leftovers) will co-showrun and executive produce the series, which tells the story of Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, two hyper-smart, ambitious young idealists who tried to remake the global financial system in the blink of an eye ā and then seduced, coaxed, and teased each other into stealing $8 billion.
The best one-stop summary I know of is still Scott Alexanderās In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism from late 2023. Iām curious to see if anyone has an updated take, if not Iāll keep steering folks there:
Hereās a short, very incomplete list of things effective altruism has accomplished in its ~10 years of existence. Iām counting it as an EA accomplishment if EA either provided the funding or did the work, further explanations in the footnotes. Iām also slightly conflating EA, rationalism, and AI doomerism rather than doing the hard work of teasing them apart:
Global Health And Development
Saved about 200,000 lives total, mostly from malaria1
Treated 25 million cases of chronic parasite infection.2
Given 5 million people access to clean drinking water.3
Supported clinical trials for both the RTS.S malaria vaccine (currently approved!) and the R21/āMatrix malaria vaccine (on track for approval)4
Supported additional research into vaccines for syphilis, malaria, helminths, and hepatitis C and E.5
Supported teams giving development economics advice in Ethiopia, India, Rwanda, and around the world.6
Animal Welfare:
Convinced farms to switch 400 million chickens from caged to cage-free.7
Freed 500,000 pigs from tiny crates where they werenāt able to move around8
Gotten 3,000 companies including Pepsi, Kelloggs, CVS, and Whole Foods to commit to selling low-cruelty meat.
AI:
Developed RLHF, a technique for controlling AI output widely considered the key breakthrough behind ChatGPT.9
ā¦and other major AI safety advances, including RLAIF and the foundations of AI interpretability10.
Founded the field of AI safety, and incubated it from nothing up to the point where Geoffrey Hinton, Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Bill Gates, and hundreds of others have endorsed it and urged policymakers to take it seriously.11
Helped convince OpenAI to dedicate 20% of company resources to a team working on aligning future superintelligences.
Gotten major AI companies including OpenAI to work with ARC Evals and evaluate their models for dangerous behavior before releasing them.
Got two seats on the board of OpenAI, held majority control of OpenAI for one wild weekend, and still apparently might have some seats on the board of OpenAI, somehow?12
Helped found, and continue to have majority control of, competing AI startup Anthropic, a $30 billion company widely considered the only group with technology comparable to OpenAIās.13
Helped (probably, I have no secret knowledge) the Biden administration pass what they called āthe strongest set of actions any government in the world has ever taken on AI safety, security, and trust.ā
Won the PR war: a recent poll shows that 70% of US voters believe that mitigating extinction risk from AI should be a āglobal priorityā.
Other:
Helped organize the SecureDNA consortium, which helps DNA synthesis companies figure out what their customers are requesting and avoid accidentally selling bioweapons to terrorists14.
Provided a significant fraction of all funding for DC groups trying to lower the risk of nuclear war.15
Played a big part in creating the YIMBY movementāIām as surprised by this one as you are, but see footnote for evidence17.
I think other people are probably thinking of this as par for the courseāall of these seem like the sort of thing a big movement should be able to do. But I remember when EA was three philosophers and few weird Bay Area nerds with a blog. It clawed its way up into the kind of movement that could do these sorts of things by having all the virtues it claims to have: dedication, rationality, and (I think) genuine desire to make the world a better place.
If itās anything like the book Going Infinite by Michael Lewis, itāll probably be a relatively sympathetic portrayal. My initial impression from the announcement post is that it at least sounds like the angle theyāre going for is misguided haphazard idealists (which Lewis also did), rather than mere criminal masterminds.
Graham Moore is best known for the Imitation Game, the movie about Alan Turing, and his portrayal was a classic āmisunderstood genius angleā. If he brings that kind of energy to a movie about SBF, we can hope he shows EA in a positive light as well.
Another possible comparison you could make would be with the movie The Social Network, which was inspired by real life, but took a lot of liberties and interestingly made Dustin Moskovitz (who funds a lot of EA stuff through Open Philanthropy) a very sympathetic character. (Edit: Confused him and Eduardo Saverin).
I also think thereās lots of precedence for Hollywood to generally make dramas and movies that are sympathetic to apparent āvillainsā and āantiheroesā. Mindless caricatures are less interesting to watch than nuanced portrayals of complex characters with human motivations. The good fiction at least tries to have that kind of depth.
So, Iām cautiously optimistic. When you actually dive deeper into the story of SBF, you realize heās more complex than yet another crypto grifter, and I think a nuanced portrayal could actually help EA recover a bit from the narrative that weāre just a TESCREAL techbro cult.
I do also agree in general that we should be louder about the good that EA has actually done in the world.
According to the Guardian there is also one movie, another series, and several documentaries potentially in the works
The series is one of several projects in the works on the high-profile financial saga. It was announced in November that Girls creator Lena Dunham will write a movie based on Michael Lewisās 2023 bestseller Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon for Apple and A24. Amazon Prime Video has a limited series in the works from Marvel directors Joe and Anthony Russo and writer David Weil.
There are also multiple competing nonfiction projects: one from Vice Media and the Information on effective altruism, and another from studio XTR and director David Darg that promises āunprecedented access to key players at FTX and the cryptocurrency communityā in Bankman-Friedās home base of the Bahamas.
A third documentary from Fortune and Mark Wahlbergās company Unrealistic Ideas will focus on the relationship between Bankman-Fried and one of his most vocal critics, Binance founder and CEO Changpeng āCZā Zhao. Bloomberg has already aired a nonfiction special on the debacle, titled Ruin: Money, Ego & Deception at FTX.
and another from studio XTR and director David Darg that promises āunprecedented access to key players at FTX and the cryptocurrency communityā in Bankman-Friedās home base of the Bahamas.
I donāt think this is necessarily related, but it should be noted that XTR is also currently making a documentary about the Zizians.
I think this is very hard to predict, and I just feel uncertain. Public perception seems to be really fickle, and I could imagine each show being either:
Negative towards SBF/āCaroline and negative towards EA (itās all tech bros feeling superior, e.g. here)
Negative towards SBF/āCaroline and positive towards EA (they used ethics as āmostly a frontā and only cared about winning)
Positive towards SBF/āCaroline, and negative towards EA (they started as idealistic altruists and got corrupted by the toxic EA ideology)
Positive towards SBF/āCaroline, and positive towards EA (e.g. making John J. Ray III and Sullivan and Cromwell the villains)
And for each of these 4, itās not clear what the impact on EA would be, e.g. I think āThe Wolf of Wall Streetā probably got many people excited about working in finance.
I predict the documentaries will be negative towards EA, as was the vast majority of media on EA in 2023 and 2024, and I think documentaries tend to be mostly negative about their subject, but Iām much more unsure about the fiction series
There is going to be a Netflix series on SBF titled The Altruists, so EA will be back in the media. I donāt know how EA will be portrayed in the show, but regardless, now is a great time to improve EA communications. More specifically, being a lot more loud about historical and current EA wins ā we just donāt talk about them enough!
A snippet from Netflixās official announcement post:
The best one-stop summary I know of is still Scott Alexanderās In Continued Defense Of Effective Altruism from late 2023. Iām curious to see if anyone has an updated take, if not Iāll keep steering folks there:
If itās anything like the book Going Infinite by Michael Lewis, itāll probably be a relatively sympathetic portrayal. My initial impression from the announcement post is that it at least sounds like the angle theyāre going for is misguided haphazard idealists (which Lewis also did), rather than mere criminal masterminds.
Graham Moore is best known for the Imitation Game, the movie about Alan Turing, and his portrayal was a classic āmisunderstood genius angleā. If he brings that kind of energy to a movie about SBF, we can hope he shows EA in a positive light as well.
Another possible comparison you could make would be with the movie The Social Network, which was inspired by real life, but took a lot of liberties and
interestingly made Dustin Moskovitz (who funds a lot of EA stuff through Open Philanthropy) a very sympathetic character.(Edit: Confused him and Eduardo Saverin).I also think thereās lots of precedence for Hollywood to generally make dramas and movies that are sympathetic to apparent āvillainsā and āantiheroesā. Mindless caricatures are less interesting to watch than nuanced portrayals of complex characters with human motivations. The good fiction at least tries to have that kind of depth.
So, Iām cautiously optimistic. When you actually dive deeper into the story of SBF, you realize heās more complex than yet another crypto grifter, and I think a nuanced portrayal could actually help EA recover a bit from the narrative that weāre just a TESCREAL techbro cult.
I do also agree in general that we should be louder about the good that EA has actually done in the world.
Minor thing, but I donāt remember Dustin being portrayed much in The Social Network? Do you mean Eduardo Saverin?
Oh, woops, I totally confused the two. My bad.
Yeah, he is. He was played by Joseph Mazzello.
According to the Guardian there is also one movie, another series, and several documentaries potentially in the works
Oooh, Iād better get to work on my SBF musical š
Eh eh eh.
https://āāsuno.com/āāsong/āābe4cc4e2-15b2-42e7-b87f-86e367c0673d
I donāt think this is necessarily related, but it should be noted that XTR is also currently making a documentary about the Zizians.
Oh manā¦ this really make it sound like Itās So Over
I think this is very hard to predict, and I just feel uncertain. Public perception seems to be really fickle, and I could imagine each show being either:
Negative towards SBF/āCaroline and negative towards EA (itās all tech bros feeling superior, e.g. here)
Negative towards SBF/āCaroline and positive towards EA (they used ethics as āmostly a frontā and only cared about winning)
Positive towards SBF/āCaroline, and negative towards EA (they started as idealistic altruists and got corrupted by the toxic EA ideology)
Positive towards SBF/āCaroline, and positive towards EA (e.g. making John J. Ray III and Sullivan and Cromwell the villains)
And for each of these 4, itās not clear what the impact on EA would be, e.g. I think āThe Wolf of Wall Streetā probably got many people excited about working in finance.
I predict the documentaries will be negative towards EA, as was the vast majority of media on EA in 2023 and 2024, and I think documentaries tend to be mostly negative about their subject, but Iām much more unsure about the fiction series