Benevolent_Rain

A mir­ror bio shelter might cost as lit­tle as ~$10,000/​per­son (ma­te­rial cost only)

• Benevolent_RainDec 19, 2024, 9:36 AM

  3 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: The need for a cen­tral repos­i­tory of OH biosafety and biose­cu­rity surveillance data in­clud­ing data ag­gre­ga­tion, col­la­tion and visualization

  It sounds like it would be uncontroversially good to have such a system in place. Have you checked if Ambitious Impact might have looked into outbreak detection? If not, it might be useful, although it takes some time, to get at least some very rough estimates of how much such a system might cost and some transparent estimates of how many lives/​how much suffering might be averted by such a system? I could imagine it could be quite affordable and very effective, but beyond the numbers, understanding the different elements of a cost effectiveness estimate will also help readers like me understand the various considerations.

• Benevolent_RainDec 9, 2024, 1:43 PM

  2 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Gemma 🔸’s comment on: Longter­mism bet­ter from a de­vel­op­ment skep­ti­cal stance?

  That is super interesting and something I think I would have been blind to had you not mentioned it. I think I posted more for epistemics as I think this could be true (but am biased and not that well informed!) and less because of how this could be used in outreach. But I think the outreach part is interesting if it is “true enough” to be communicated—I guess it does in a way build on the “charity starts at home” type of thinking although that is its own complicated set of beliefes to unpack!

Longter­mism bet­ter from a de­vel­op­ment skep­ti­cal stance?

• Benevolent_RainNov 25, 2024, 2:42 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Benevolent_Rain’s comment on: Gw­ern on cre­at­ing your own AI race and China’s Fast Fol­lower strat­egy.

  Sorry for posting it here too, but a FLI podcast just dropped that seems relevant, it mentions 24 minutes in some push by several actors to use China to motivate action.

• Benevolent_RainNov 25, 2024, 12:24 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Benevolent_Rain’s comment on: AMA: PauseAI US needs money! Ask founder/​Exec Dir Holly El­more any­thing for 11/​19

  FYI, weirdly timely podcast episode out from FLI that includes discussion of CoIs in AI Safety.

• Benevolent_RainNov 25, 2024, 12:22 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Habryka [Deactivated]’s comment on: In­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist in the AI safety space?

  FYI, weirdly timely podcast episode just out from FLI.

• Benevolent_RainNov 25, 2024, 9:43 AM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: David Mathers🔸’s comment on: David Mathers’s Quick takes

  Thanks for doing that and I look forward to hopefully publishing your findings. It would be valuable at least to me for the doc to show clearly, if you have time for that, if there might be biases in funding—it might be as important what is not funded as what is funded. For example, if some collection of smaller donors put 40% of funding towards considering slowing down AI, while a larger donor spends less than 2%, that might might be interesting at least as a pointer towards investigating such disparities in more detail (I noticed that Pause AI was a bit higher up in the donation election results, for example).

• Benevolent_RainNov 25, 2024, 9:34 AM

  21 points

  6 ∶ 0

  on: Gw­ern on cre­at­ing your own AI race and China’s Fast Fol­lower strat­egy.

  Strong upvote. I feel like the China-US AI race debate is laden with ideology and confused lack of specificity. It is like how “capitalism” is used. People throw the term around and it can mean hundred different things. Every mention of China in relation to AI should be specific. Are we talking about AI-enabled cyberattacks against civilian infrastructure in the West? Are we talking about some weird pathway where they will create a communist super-bot that will both rule China and the rest of the world? Are we talking about only the GDP impact? Or how increased GDP will allow them to build a larger military? Or some subset of these multitude of ways in which “China winning on AI” is important?
  
  Currently, without the lack of specificity I feel that the China AI debate is less about any specific threat and more about creating some appealing, overly simplified narrative that can lubricate the bureaucratic machine, get buy-in from a range of private sector stakeholders and fabricate some sense of urgency for people to push through various agendas. My fear is that this sounds eerily similar to “threat of the communists” during the Cold war which can be argued led to the disastrous outcome of thousands of nuclear warheads still being pointed at some of the most dense clusters of civilians around the world.
  
  I have read far from everything about AI, so if someone has pointers to material on why China as a one-word concept is useful to point to I would be grateful. I see this issue has been raised many times on the Forum and have not read everything but decided to comment any way as I think signal boosting here is important, especially as the China one-worder is being quite casually thrown around by people with lots of influence.

• Benevolent_RainNov 16, 2024, 8:45 PM

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: In­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist in the AI safety space?

  No, my comments are completely novice and naïve. I think I am just baffled that all of the funding of AI Safety is done by individuals who will profit massively from accelerating AI. Or, I think what baffles me most is how little focus there is on this peculiar combination of incentives—I listen to a few AI podcasts and browse the forum now and then—why am I only hearing about it now after a couple of years? Not sure what to think of it—my main feeling is just that the relative silence about this is somehow strange, especially in an environment that places importance on epistemics and biases.

• Benevolent_RainNov 15, 2024, 8:47 PM

  3 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Habryka [Deactivated]’s comment on: In­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist in the AI safety space?

  Thanks that is super helpful although some downvotes could have come from what might be perceived as a slightly infantilizing tone—haha! (no offense taken as you are right that the information is really accessible but I guess I am just a bit surprised that this is not more often mentioned on the podcasts I listen to, or perhaps I have just missed several EAF posts on this).
  
  Ok so all major funders of AI safety are personally, and probably quite significantly going to profit from the large AI companies making AI powerful and pervasive.
  
  I guess the good thing is then as AI grows they will have more money to put towards making it safe—it might not be all bad.

• Benevolent_RainNov 15, 2024, 1:34 PM

  13 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: #207 – Why she shut down her char­ity, and why more founders should fol­low her lead (Sarah Eustis-Guthrie on The 80,000 Hours Pod­cast)

  I really liked this episode. Less big ideas and more interesting and helpful stories from “the field”. More of this please!

• Benevolent_RainNov 15, 2024, 12:01 PM

  2 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: OscarD🔸’s comment on: AMA: PauseAI US needs money! Ask founder/​Exec Dir Holly El­more any­thing for 11/​19

  Yeah apologies for the vague wording—I guess I am just trying to say this is something I know very little about. Perhaps I am biased from my work on Climate Change where there is a track record of those who would lose economically (or not profit) from action on climate change making attempts to slow down progress on solving CC. If there might be mechanisms like this at play in AI safety (and that is a big if!) I feel (and this should be looked more deeply into) like there is value to directing only a minimal stream of funding to have someone just pay attention to the fact that there is some chance such mechanisms might be beginning to play out in AI safety as well. I would not say it makes people with COI’s impact bad or not trustworthy, but it might point at gaps in what is not funded. I mean this was all inspired by the OP that Pause AI seems to struggle to get funding. Maybe it is true that Pause AI is not the best use of marginal money. But at the same time, I think it could be true that at least partially, such a funding decisions might be due to incentives playing out in subtle ways. I am really unsure about all this but think it is worth looking into funding someone with “no strings attached” to pay attention to this, especially given the stakes and how previously EA has suffered from too much trust especially with the FTX scandal.

• Benevolent_RainNov 15, 2024, 10:22 AM

  2 points

  3 ∶ 1

  on: In­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist in the AI safety space?

  Not sure why this is tagged Community? Ticking one of these makes it EA Community:
  
  

  • The post is about EA as a cultural phenomenon (as opposed to EA as a project of doing good)

    • I think this is clearly about doing good, it does not rely on EA at all, only AI safety.

  • The post is about norms, attitudes or practices you’d like to see more or less of within the EA community

    • This is a practice that might be relevant to AI safety independent of EA.

  • The post would be irrelevant to someone who was interested in doing good effectively, but NOT interested in the effective altruism community

    • If this is indeed something that would help AI safety, I think someone interested in this topic but without any knowledge or interest in the EA Community would be highly relevant. I would welcome any explanation about why, given this, this question is about community?

  • The post concerns an ongoing conversation, scandal or discourse that would not be relevant to someone who doesn’t care about the EA community.

    • Again, this should be relevant to people that have no interest in EA but an interest in AI safety

[Question] In­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist in the AI safety space?

• Benevolent_RainNov 15, 2024, 8:41 AM

  4 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Holly Elmore ⏸️ 🔸’s comment on: AMA: PauseAI US needs money! Ask founder/​Exec Dir Holly El­more any­thing for 11/​19

  I don’t know if this analogy holds but that sounds a bit like how in certain news organizations, “lower down” journalists self censor—they do not need to be told what not to publish. Instead they independently just anticipate what they can and cannot say based on how their career might be affected by their superiors’ reactions to their work. And I think if that is actually going on it might not even be conscious.
  
  I also saw some pretty strong downvotes on my comment above. Just to make clear and in case this is the reason for my downvotes: I am not insinuating anything—I really hope and want to believe there is no big conflicts of interest. I might have been scarred by working on climate change where the polluters for years, if not decades really spent time and money slowing down action on cutting down CO2 emissions. Hopefully these patterns are not repeated with AI. Also I have much less knowledge about AI and have only heard a few times that Google etc. are sponsoring safety conferences etc.
  
  In any case, I believe that in addition to technical and policy work, it would be really valuable to have someone funded to really pay attention and dig into details on any conflicts of interest and skewed incentives—it set action on climate change back significantly something we might not afford with AI as it might be more binary in terms of the onset of a catastrophe. Regarding funding week—if the big donors are not currently sponsoring anyone to do this, I think this is an excellent opportunity for smaller donors to put in place a crucially missing piece of the puzzle—I would be keen to support something like this myself.

• Benevolent_RainNov 13, 2024, 8:30 PM

  6 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: saulius’s comment on: saulius’s Shortform

  Maybe this is a cop-out but I am thinking more and more of a pluralistic and mutually respectful future. Some people might take off on a spaceship to settle a nearby solar system. Some others might live lower-tech in eco villages. Animals will be free to pursue their goals. And each of these people will pursue their version of a worthwhile future with minimal reduction in the potential of others to fulfill theirs. I think anything else will just lead to oppressions of everyone that is not onboard with some specific wild project—I think most people’s dreams of a future are pretty wild and not something I would want for myself!

• Benevolent_RainNov 13, 2024, 10:43 AM

  2 points

  1 ∶ 10

  in reply to: MichaelDickens’s comment on: AMA: PauseAI US needs money! Ask founder/​Exec Dir Holly El­more any­thing for 11/​19

  If this is true, or even just likely to, and someone has data on this, making this data public, even in anonymous form will be extremely high impact. I do recognize that such moves could come at great personal cost but in case it is true I just wanted to put it out there that such disclosures could be a single action that might by far outstrip even the lifetime impact of almost any other person working to reduce x-risk from AI. Also, my impression is that any evidence of this going on is absent form public information. I really hope absence of such information is actually just because nothing of this sort is actually going on but it is worth being vigilant.

• Benevolent_RainNov 12, 2024, 8:13 AM

  5 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: A se­lec­tion of les­sons from Se­bas­tian Lodemann

  Just the other day I had some question looking back at some older documents and was wondering who could answer it when Seb came to mind. So in a sense he is still teaching me lessons—this time that my work builds on the work of so many others. At the same time it also shows that when one is doing potentially important work, it is highly likely that one’s legacy will live on in a myriad ways with real-world impact.

• Benevolent_RainNov 8, 2024, 2:35 PM

  4 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: JP Addison🔸’s comment on: Poli­tics and the EA Fo­rum

  Not sure what to make of it, but one of 80k hrs top recommendations is Government and policy—here it seems like several top careers could need to consider what party to work for. I might agree that discussions about who to vote for might not be high priority (although I think Rob Wiblin made a really good point that in “swing districts” voting might be really high value in expectation). That said, there might be a trade-off for many people, perhaps even EA as a whole between whether to try to make those issues that are still not partisan (like AI perhaps) stay non-partisan and using our resources to galvanize a political faction around issues that are partisan.