Academically/professionally interested in AI governance (research, policy, communications, and strategy), technology policy, longtermism, healthy doses of moral philosophy, the social sciences, and blog writing.
Hater of factory farms, enjoyer of effective charities.
julian[dot]hazell[at]mansfield.ox.ac.uk
I’m appreciative for Shakeel Hashim. Comms roles seem hard in general. Comms roles for EA seem even harder than that. Comms roles for EA during the last 3 months sound unbelievably hard and stressful.
(Note: Shakeel is a personal friend of mine, but I don’t think that has much influence on how appreciative I am of the work he’s doing, and everyone else managing these crises).
This is great, thanks for the change. As someone who aspires to use evidence and careful reasoning to determine how to best use my altruistic resources, I sometimes get uncomfortable when people call me an effective altruist.
Thank you for the work you and your team do, Julia. Many of these situations are incredibly tricky to handle, and I’m very grateful the EA community has people working on them.
When are you gonna go on the 80,000 Hours podcast, Luke? :)
Thanks for the post Michael — these sorts of posts have been very helpful for making me a more informed donor. I just want to point out one minor thing though.
I appreciate you and your team’s work and plan on donating part of my giving season donations to either your organisation, Strongminds, or a combination of both. But I did find the title of this post a bit unnecessarily adversarial to GiveWell (although it’s clever, I must admit).
I’ve admired the fruitful, polite, and productive interactions between GW and HLI in the past and therefore I somewhat dislike the tone struck here.
(This can include current and former team members)
EA is neglecting trying to influence non-EA organizations, and this is becoming more detrimental to impact over time.
+1 to this — it’s something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately, and I’m happy you mentioned it.
I’m not convinced the EA community will be able to effectively solve the problems we’re keen on tackling if we mainly rely on a (relatively) small group of people who are unusually receptive to counterintuitive ideas, especially highly technical problems like AI safety. Rather, we’ll need a large coalition of people who can make progress on these sorts of challenges. All else equal, I think we’ve neglected the value of influencing others, even if these folks might not become highly active EAs who attend conferences or whatever.
Thanks for taking the time to write up your views on this. I’d be keen on reading more posts like this from other folks with backgrounds in ML — particularly those who aren’t already already in the EA/LessWrong/AIS sphere.
Yeah, I’m also similarly sceptical that a highly publicised/discussed portion of one of the most hyped industries — one that borders on a buzzword at times — has not captured the attention or consideration of the market. Seems hard to imagine given the remarkably salient progress we’ve seen in 2022.
Thanks for writing this!
A few thoughts:
You touch on this briefly at the end, but I think what is missing from these “consider leaving EA posts” is what one might do before getting to the point where leaving is the best option. What might some early warning signs be, and what are some less intense measures someone might wish to consider prior to leaving entirely?
I wonder what we can do as a community to make these sorts of considerations easier on people. How might we be able to build structures/processes that can help people before it gets bad?
I think you might be underestimating the difficulty of coming back to the community after leaving. A few things that might be difficult about returning are (a) feeling like you’re out of the epistemic loop, (b) feeling weird about suddenly reappearing when people might notice you’ve been gone, and (c) needing to make life decisions while you’re gone (finding new jobs, moving, etc).
On the contrary, my best guess is that the “dying with dignity” style dooming is harming the community’s ability to tackle AI risk as effectively as it otherwise could
That said, if OpenPhilanthropy is pursuing this grant under a hits-based approach, it might be less controversial if they were to acknowledge this.
In this case — and many, actually — I think it’s fair to assume they are. OP is pretty explicit about taking a hits-based giving approach.
I’m neither a software engineer nor on the job market, but I found myself reading to the end because of how much fun this post is. Well done!
Might also add my totally-completely-absolutely-unbiased opinion that working at CEA/other orgs in the CEA umbrella is amazing.
Let’s fulfil Mill’s wishes by buying some coal mines.
I would like to know why. I found the post insightful.
Does GWWC currently have a funding gap?
How much would you need to fund the activities you’d ideally like to do over the next two years?
This is great! I love the simplicity and how fast and frictionless the experience is.
I think I might be part of the ideal target market, as someone who has long wanted to get more into the habit of concretely writing out his predictions but often lacks the motivation to do so consistently.
Very cool! I’m excited to see where this project goes.
That phrasing is better, IMO. Thanks Michael.
I think the debate between HLI and GW is great. I’ve certainly learned a lot, and have slightly updated my views about where I should give. I agree that competition between charities (and charity evaluators) is something to strive for, and I hope HLI keeps challenging GiveWell in this regard.
Thank you to the CAIS team (and other colleagues) for putting this together. This is such a valuable contribution to the broader AI risk discourse.