Matthew_Barnett

Karma: 4,211

Matthew_Barnett Mar 27, 2025, 9:53 PM
8 points
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in reply to: AnonymousTurtle’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
Using the data cited in your source (the Distributional Financial Accounts (DFA) provided by the Federal Reserve Board of Governors), it seems to me that the growth in the share of wealth held by the top 0.1% has not been very fast in the last 20 years—growing from around 10-11% to around 14% over that period. In my opinion, this is a significant, albeit rather unimportant trend relative to other social shifts in the last 20 years.
Moreover, this data does not include wealth held in social insurance programs (as I pointed out in another comment). If included, this would presumably decrease the magnitude of the trend seen in this plot, especially regarding the declining share of wealth held by the bottom 90%.

Matthew_Barnett Mar 27, 2025, 9:23 PM
4 points
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in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
I could sympathize with the frustration, but I feel like I’m being attacked in a way that’s pretty unfair.
Sorry if my previous comment came across as rude or harsh—that wasn’t my intention. I didn’t mean to attack you. I asked those questions to clarify your exact claim because I wanted to understand it fully and potentially challenge it depending on its interpretation. My intent was for constructive disagreement, not criticism of you personally.
I find your other papers you linked in other comments interesting. That said, I don’t see them changing my main argument much.
Your main argument started with and seemed to depend heavily on the idea that inequality has been increasing. If it turns out that this key assumption is literally incorrect, then it seems like that should significantly affect your argument.

Matthew_Barnett Mar 27, 2025, 8:44 PM
6 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: titotal’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
Your point about the top 1%’s rising income share uses pre-tax and transfers data, which can be misleading here because the discussion is specifically about how much income rich people actually control and can redirect towards their desired ends. Post-tax and transfer measures are more informative in this context since they directly reflect the resources individuals genuinely have available after taxes and redistribution. In other words, taxes and transfers matter because they substantially reduce the actual amount of wealth the rich can freely use, donate, or influence society with. Ignoring this gives a distorted picture of how much power or control rich people practically possess, which is central to the original discussion.
Other studies have notably not found meaningful increases in the top 1%’s income share after taxes and transfers are taken into account:

Matthew_Barnett Mar 27, 2025, 8:33 PM
8 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: huw’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
It’s worth noting that much of the reported increase in wealth inequality since 1989 seems to be explained by the rising share of wealth held via social insurance programs. Catherine et al. notes,
Recent influential work finds large increases in inequality in the U.S. based on measures of wealth concentration that notably exclude the value of social insurance programs. This paper shows that top wealth shares have not changed much over the last three decades when Social Security is properly accounted for. This is because Social Security wealth increased substantially from $7 trillion in 1989 to $39 trillion in 2019 and now represents 49% of the wealth of the bottom 90% of the wealth distribution. This finding is robust to potential changes to taxes and benefits in response to system financing concerns.
Since both ordinary private wealth and social insurance programs are similar in that they provide continuous streams of income to people, I think it’s likely misleading to suggest that wealth inequality has gone up meaningfully in recent decades in the United States—at least based on the reported datasets that presently exist.
Social insurance income streams are especially relevant in this context because they directly affect how much real economic power and control people have in practice. Ignoring social insurance thus exaggerates how concentrated real economic power actually is, since it underestimates the resources available to the broader population.
That said, inequality statistics are quite contentious in general given the lack of reliable data on the exact variables we care about, so I’m not highly confident in this picture. Ultimately I’m unsure whether inequality has remained roughly constant over the last few decades in the sense we should care about.

Matthew_Barnett Mar 27, 2025, 6:39 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Ozzie Gooen’s comment on: Ozzie Gooen’s Shortform
It seems like recently (say, the last 20 years) inequality has been rising.
When you say inequality has been rising, do you mean income inequality or wealth inequality? What’s your source for this claim?
[Edit: reworded to be less curt and harsh]

Matthew_Barnett Mar 17, 2025, 11:41 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Pablo’s comment on: Discussion Thread: Existential Choices Debate Week
I tentatively agree with your statement that,
To me, it seems much more likely that Earth-originating intelligence will go extinct this century than, say, in the 8973th century AD.
That said, I still suspect the absolute probability of total extinction of intelligent life during the 21st century is very low. To be more precise, I’d put this probability at around 1% (to be clear: I recognize other people may not agree that this credence should count as “extremely low” or “very low” in this context). To justify this statement, I would highlight several key factors:
1. Throughout hundreds of millions of years, complex life has demonstrated remarkable resilience. Since the first vertebrates colonized land during the late Devonian period (approximately 375–360 million years ago), no extinction event has ever eradicated all species capable of complex cognition. Even after the most catastrophic mass extinctions, such as the end-Permian extinction and the K-Pg extinction, vertebrates rebounded. Not only did they recover, but they also surpassed their previous levels of ecological dominance and cognitive complexity, as seen in the increasing brain size and adaptability of various species over time.
2. Unlike non-intelligent organisms, intelligent life—starting with humans—possesses advanced planning abilities and an exceptional capacity to adapt to changing environments. Humans have successfully settled in nearly every climate and terrestrial habitat on Earth, from tropical jungles to arid deserts and even Antarctica. This extreme adaptability suggests that intelligent life is less vulnerable to complete extinction compared to other complex life forms.
3. As human civilization has advanced, our species has become increasingly robust against most types of extinction events rather than more fragile. Technological progress has expanded our ability to mitigate threats, whether they come from natural disasters or disease. Our massive global population further reduces the likelihood that any single event could exterminate every last human, while our growing capacity to detect and neutralize threats makes us better equipped to survive crises.
4. History shows that even in cases of large-scale violence and genocide, the goal has almost always been the destruction of rival groups—not the annihilation of all life, including the perpetrators themselves. This suggests that intelligent beings have strong instrumental reasons to avoid total extinction events. Even in scenarios involving genocidal warfare, the likelihood of all intelligent beings willingly or accidentally destroying all life—including their own—seems very low.
5. I have yet to see any compelling evidence that near-term or medium-term technological advancements will introduce a weapon or catastrophe capable of wiping out all forms of intelligent life. While near-term technological risks certainly exist that threaten human life, none currently appear to pose a credible risk of total extinction of intelligent life.
6. Some of the most destructive long-term technologies—such as asteroid manipulation for planetary bombardment—are likely to develop alongside technologies that enhance our ability to survive and expand into space. As our capacity for destruction grows, so too will our ability to establish off-world colonies and secure alternative survival strategies. This suggests that the overall trajectory of intelligent life seems to be toward increasing resilience, not increasing vulnerability.
7. Artificial life could rapidly evolve to become highly resilient to environmental shocks. Future AIs could be designed to be at least as robust as insects—able to survive in a wide range of extreme and unpredictable conditions. Similar to plant seeds, artificial hardware could be engineered to efficiently store and execute complex self-replicating instructions in a highly compact form, enabling them to autonomously colonize diverse environments by utilizing various energy sources, such as solar and thermal energy. Having been engineered rather than evolved naturally, these artificial systems could take advantage of design principles that surpass biological organisms in adaptability. By leveraging a vast array of energy sources and survival strategies, they could likely colonize some of the most extreme and inhospitable environments in our solar system—places that even the most resilient biological life forms on Earth could never inhabit.

Matthew_Barnett Mar 17, 2025, 10:23 PM
2 points
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in reply to: Pablo’s comment on: Discussion Thread: Existential Choices Debate Week
In my comment I later specified “in [the] next century” though it’s quite understandable if you missed that. I agree that eventual extinction of Earth-originating intelligent life (including AIs) is likely; however, I don’t currently see a plausible mechanism for this to occur over time horizons that are brief by cosmological standards.
(I just edited the original comment to make this slightly clearer.)

Matthew_Barnett Mar 17, 2025, 8:47 PM
3 points
1 ∶ 1
on: Discussion Thread: Existential Choices Debate Week
In my view, the extinction of all Earth-originating intelligent life (including AIs) seems extremely unlikely over the next several decades. While a longtermist utilitarian framework takes even a 0.01 percentage point reduction in extinction risk quite seriously, there appear to be very few plausible ways that all intelligent life originating from Earth could go extinct in the next century. Ensuring a positive transition to artificial life seems more useful on current margins.

Matthew_Barnett Mar 3, 2025, 8:11 AM
2 points
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in reply to: sammyboiz🔸’s comment on: Opinionated take on EA and AI Safety
That makes sense. For what it’s worth, I’m also not convinced that delaying AI is the right choice from a purely utilitarian perspective. I think there are reasonable arguments on both sides. My most recent post touches on this topic, so it might be worth reading for a better understanding of where I stand.
Right now, my stance is to withhold strong judgment on whether accelerating AI is harmful on net from a utilitarian point of view. It’s not that I think a case can’t be made: it’s just I don’t think the existing arguments are decisive enough to justify a firm position. In contrast, the argument that accelerating AI benefits people who currently exist seems significantly more straightforward and compelling to me.
This combination of views leads me to see accelerating AI as a morally acceptable choice (as long as it’s paired with adequate safety measures). Put simply:
- When I consider the well-being of people who currently exist, the case for acceleration appears fairly strong and compelling.
- When I take an impartial utilitarian perspective—one that prioritizes long-term outcomes for all sentient beings—the arguments for delaying AI seem weak and highly uncertain.
Since I give substantial weight to both perspectives, the stronger and clearer case for acceleration (based on the interests of people alive today) outweighs the much weaker and more uncertain case for delay (based on speculative long-term utilitarian concerns) in my view.
Of course, my analysis here doesn’t apply to someone who gives almost no moral weight to the well-being of people alive today—someone who, for instance, would be fine with everyone dying horribly if it meant even a tiny increase in the probability of a better outcome for the galaxy a billion years from now. But in my view, this type of moral calculus, if taken very seriously, seems highly unstable and untethered from practical considerations.
Since I think we have very little reliable insight into what actions today will lead to a genuinely better world millions of years down the line, it seems wise to exercise caution and try to avoid overconfidence about whether delaying AI is good or bad on the basis of its very long-term effects.

Matthew_Barnett Mar 3, 2025, 7:11 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 1
in reply to: sammyboiz🔸’s comment on: Opinionated take on EA and AI Safety
I think it’s extremely careless and condemnable to impose this risk on humanity just because you have personally deemed it acceptable.
I’m not sure I fully understand this criticism. From a moral subjectivist perspective, all moral decisions are ultimately based on what individuals personally deem acceptable. If you’re suggesting that there is an objective moral standard—something external to individual preferences—that we are obligated to follow, then I would understand your point.
That said, I’m personally skeptical that such an objective morality exists. And even if it did, I don’t see why I should necessarily follow it if I could instead act according to my own moral preferences—especially if I find my own preferences to be more humane and sensible than the objective morality.
This would be a deontological nightmare. Who gave AI labs the right to risk the lives of 8 billion people?
I see why a deontologist might find accelerating AI troublesome, especially given their emphasis on act-omission asymmetry—the idea that actively causing harm is worse than merely allowing harm to happen. However, I don’t personally find that distinction very compelling, especially in this context.
I’m also not a deontologist: I approach these questions from a consequentialist perspective. My personal ethics can be described as a mix of personal attachments and broader utilitarian concerns. In other words, I both care about people who currently exist, and more generally about all morally relevant beings. So while I understand why this argument might resonate with others, it doesn’t carry much weight for me.

Matthew_Barnett Mar 3, 2025, 5:18 AM
5 points
1 ∶ 0
in reply to: sammyboiz🔸’s comment on: Opinionated take on EA and AI Safety
I think the benefits of AGI arriving sooner are substantial. Many of my family members, for example, could be spared from death or serious illness if advanced AI accelerates medical progress. However, if AGI is delayed for many years, they will likely die before such breakthroughs occur, leaving me to live without them.
I’m not making a strictly selfish argument here either, since this situation isn’t unique to me—most people have loved ones in similar circumstances. Therefore, speeding up the benefits of AGI would have substantial ethical value from a perspective that values the lives of all humans who are alive today.
A moral point of view in which we give substantial weight to people who exist right now is indeed one of the most common ethical frameworks applied to policy. This may even be the most common mainstream ethical framework, as it’s implicit in most economic and political analysis. So I don’t think I’m proposing a crazy ethical theory here—just an unusual one within EA.
To clarify, I’m not arguing that AI should always be accelerated at any cost. Instead, I think we should carefully balance between pushing for faster progress and ensuring AI safety. If you either (1) believe that p(doom) is low, or (2) doubt that delaying AGI would meaningfully reduce p(doom), then it makes a lot of sense—under many common ethical perspectives—to view Anthropic as a force for good.

Matthew_Barnett Mar 3, 2025, 3:51 AM
9 points
1 ∶ 4
on: Opinionated take on EA and AI Safety
I’m admittedly unusual within the EA community on the issue of AI, but I’ll just give my thoughts on why I don’t think it’s productive to shame people who work at AI companies advancing AI capabilities.
In my view, there are two competing ethical priorities that I think we should try to balance:
1. Making sure that AI is developed safely and responsibly, so that AIs don’t harm humans in the future.
2. Making sure that AI is developed quickly, in order to take advantage of the enormous economic and technological benefits of AI sooner in time. This would, among other things, enable us to save lives by hastening AI-assisted medical progress.
If you believe that AI safety (priority 1) is the only meaningful ethical concern and that accelerating AI progress (priority 2) has little or no value in comparison, then it makes sense why you might view AI companies like Anthropic as harmful. From that perspective, any effort to advance AI capabilities could be seen as inherently trading off against an inviolable goal.
However, if you think—as I do—that both priorities matter substantially, then what companies like Anthropic are doing seems quite positive. They are not simply pushing forward AI development; rather, they are working to advance AI while also trying to ensure that it is developed in a safe and responsible way.
This kind of balancing act isn’t unusual. In most industries, we typically don’t perceive safety and usefulness as inherently opposed to each other. Rather, we usually recognize that both technological progress and safe development are important objectives to push for.

Matthew_Barnett Feb 26, 2025, 8:43 PM
19 points
5 ∶ 0
in reply to: Linch’s comment on: How confident are you that it’s preferable for America to develop AGI before China does?
Personally, I haven’t spent that much time investing this question, but I currently believe it’s very unlikely that the One Child Policy was primarily responsible for demographic collapse.
This may not have been the original intention behind the claim, but in my view, the primary signal I get from the One Child Policy is that the Chinese government has the appetite to regulate what is generally seen as a deeply personal matter—one’s choice to have children. Even if the policy only had minor adverse effects on China’s population trajectory, I find it alarming that the government felt it had the moral and legal authority to restrict people’s freedom in this particular respect. This mirrors my attitudes toward those who advocate for strict anti-abortion policies, and those who advocate for coercive eugenics.
In general, there seems to be a fairly consistent pattern where the Chinese government has less respect for personal freedoms than the United States government. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, the pattern was recently observed quite clearly during the pandemic, where China imposed what was among the most severe peacetime restrictions on the movement of ordinary citizens that we have observed in recent world history. It is broadly accurate to say that China effectively imprisoned tens of million of its own people without due process. And of course, China is known for restricting free speech and digital privacy to an extent that would be almost inconceivable in the United States.
Personal freedom is just one measure of the quality of governance, but I think it’s quite an important one. While I think the United States is worse than China along some other important axes—for example, I think China has proven to be more cooperative internationally and less of a warmonger in recent decades—I consider the relative lack of respect for personal freedoms in China to be one of the best arguments for preferring United States to “win” any relevant technological arms race. This is partly because I find the possibility of a future world-wide permanent totalitarian regime to be an important source of x-risk, and in my view, China currently seems more likely than the United States to enact such a state.
That said, I still favor a broadly more cooperative approach toward China, seeking win-win compromises rather than aggressively “racing” them through unethical or dangerous means. The United States has its own share of major flaws, and the world is not a zero-sum game: China’s loss is not our gain.

Matthew_Barnett Feb 26, 2025, 8:17 PM
2 points
1 ∶ 1
in reply to: sawyer🔸’s comment on: Stop calling them labs
Unfortunately there’s momentum behind the term “AI lab” in a way that is not true for “AI bananas”. Also, it is unambiguously true that a major part of what these companies do is scientific experimentation, as one would expect in a laboratory—this makes the analogy to “AI bananas” imperfect.

Matthew_Barnett Feb 25, 2025, 8:17 PM
15 points
3 ∶ 2
on: Stop calling them labs
I agree that the term “AI company” is technically more accurate. However, I also think the term “AI lab” is still useful terminology, as it distinguishes companies that train large foundation models from companies that work in other parts of the AI space, such as companies that primarily build tools, infrastructure, or applications on top of AI models.

Matthew_Barnett Feb 21, 2025, 10:25 PM
9 points
1 ∶ 0
on: Strategic wealth accumulation under transformative AI expectations
While AI will also generate new wealth through productivity gains (which this model captures through increased TFP growth), the reallocation of existing labor income creates immediate incentives for strategic capital accumulation.
I’m worried that some of the most important results of this model hinge critically on the fact that you’re modeling new wealth via AI’s impact on TFP, rather than modeling AI as a technology that increases the labor supply or the capital stock (in addition to increasing TFP through direct R&D).
In particular, I find your claim that AI creates a “prisoner’s dilemma” scenario—where households aggressively save in order to secure a larger relative share of future wealth but, in doing so, reduce overall consumption—potentially misleading. In my view, household savings will likely play a crucial role in funding the investments necessary to build AI infrastructure, such as data centers. These investments accelerate the development of transformative AI, which in turn hastens the economic benefits of AI.
From this perspective, high savings rates are not collectively irrational or self-defeating in the way suggested by a “prisoner’s dilemma” framing. On the contrary, increased savings directly affects how soon transformative AI arrives, enabling higher consumption earlier in time, which increases time-discounted social welfare.

Matthew_Barnett Feb 17, 2025, 8:17 AM
2 points
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in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
I think what you’re saying about your own personal tradeoffs makes a lot of sense. Since I think we’re in agreement on a bunch of points here, I’ll just zero in on your last remark, since I think we still might have an important lingering disagreement:
I do think that the title of your post is broadly reasonable though. I’m an advocate for making AI x-risk cases that are premised on common sense morality like “human extinction would be really really bad”, and utilitarianism in the true philosophical sense is weird and messy and has pathological edge cases and isn’t something that I fully trust in extreme situations
I’m not confident, but I suspect that your perception of what common sense morality says is probably a bit inaccurate. For example, suppose you gave people the choice between the following scenarios:
In scenario A, their lifespan, along with the lifespans of everyone currently living, would be extended by 100 years. Everyone in the world would live for 100 years in utopia. At the end of this, however, everyone would peacefully and painlessly die, and then the world would be colonized by a race of sentient aliens.
In scenario B, everyone would receive just 2 more years to live. During this 2 year interval, life would be hellish and brutal. However, at the end of this, everyone would painfully die and be replaced by a completely distinct set of biological humans, ensuring that the human species is preserved.
In scenario A, humanity goes extinct, but we have a good time for 100 years. In scenario B, humanity is preserved, but we all die painfully in misery.
I suspect most people would probably say that scenario A is far preferable to scenario B, despite the fact that in scenario A, humanity goes extinct.
To be clear, I don’t think this scenario is directly applicable to the situation with AI. However, I think this thought experiment suggests that, while people might have some preference for avoiding human extinction, it’s probably not anywhere near the primary thing that people care about.
Based on people’s revealed preferences (such as how they spend their time, and who they spend their money on), most people care a lot about themselves and their family, but not much about the human species as an abstract concept that needs to be preserved. In a way, it’s probably the effective altruist crowd that is unusual in this respect by caring so much about human extinction, since most people don’t give the topic much thought at all.

Matthew_Barnett Feb 17, 2025, 7:42 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
Regardless, it seems like our underlying crux is that we assign utility to different things. I somewhat object to you saying that your version of this is utilitarianism and notions of assigning utility that privilege things humans value are not
I agree that our main point of disagreement seems to be about what we ultimately care about.
For what it’s worth, I didn’t mean to suggest in my post that my moral perspective is inherently superior to others. For example, my argument is fully compatible with someone being a deontologist. My goal was simply to articulate what I saw standard impartial utilitarianism as saying in this context, and to point out how many people’s arguments for AI pause don’t seem to track what standard impartial utilitarianism actually says. However, this only matters insofar as one adheres to that specific moral framework.
As a matter of terminology, I do think that the way I’m using the words “impartial utilitarianism” aligns more strongly with common usage in academic philosophy, given the emphasis that many utilitarians have placed on antispeciesist principles. However, even if you think I’m wrong on the grounds of terminology, I don’t think this disagreement subtracts much from the substance of my post as I’m simply talking about the implications of a common moral theory (regardless of whatever we choose to call it).

Matthew_Barnett Feb 17, 2025, 6:54 AM
2 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
Thanks for clarifying—if I understand correctly, you think that it’s reasonable to assert that sentience and preferences are what makes an entity morally meaningful, but that anything more specific is not?
I don’t think there’s any moral view that’s objectively more “reasonable” than any other moral view (as I’m a moral anti-realist). However, I personally don’t have a significant moral preference for humans beyond the fact that I am partial to my family, friends, and a lot of other people who are currently alive. When I think about potential future generations who don’t exist yet, I tend to adopt a more impartial, utilitarian framework.
In other words, my moral views can be summarized as a combination of personal attachments and broader utilitarian moral concerns. My personal attachments are not impartial: for example, I care about my family more than I care about random strangers. However, beyond my personal attachments, I tend to take an impartial utilitarian approach that doesn’t assign any special value to the human species.
In other words, to the extent I care about humans specifically, this concern merely arises from the fact that I’m attached to some currently living individuals who happen to be human—rather than because I think the human species is particularly important.
Does that make sense?
But in that case, it’s highly non obvious to me that AIs will have sentience or preferences in ways that I consider meaningful—this seems like an open philosophical question. Defining actually what they are also seems like an open question to me—does a thermostat have preferences?
I agree this is an open question, but I think it’s much clearer that future AIs will have complex and meaningful preferences compared to a thermostat or a plant. I think we can actually be pretty confident about this prediction given the strong economic pressures that will push AIs towards being person-like and agentic. (Note, however, that I’m not making a strong claim here that all AIs will be moral patients in the future. It’s sufficient for my argument if merely a large number of them are.)
In fact, a lot of arguments for AI risk rest on the premise that AI agents will exist in the future, and that they’ll have certain preferences (at least in a functional sense). If we were to learn that future AIs won’t have preferences, that would both undermine these arguments for AI risk, and many of my moral arguments for valuing AIs. Therefore, to the extent you think AIs will lack the cognitive prerequisites for moral patienthood—under my functionalist and preference utilitarian views—this doesn’t necessarily translate into a stronger case for worrying about AI takeover.
However, I want to note that the view I have just described is actually broader than the thesis I gave in the post. If you read my post carefully, you’ll see that I actually hedged quite a bit by saying that there are potential, logically consistent utilitarian arguments that could be made in favor of pausing AI. My thesis in the post was not that such an argument couldn’t be given. It was actually a fairly narrow thesis, and I didn’t make a strong claim that AI-controlled futures would create about as much utilitarian moral value as human-controlled futures in expectation (even though I personally think this claim is plausible).

Matthew_Barnett Feb 17, 2025, 6:21 AM
4 points
0 ∶ 0
in reply to: Neel Nanda’s comment on: The standard case for delaying AI appears to rest on non-utilitarian assumptions
I’m not super sure what you mean by individualistic. I was modelling this as utilitarian but assigning literally zero value to future people. From a purely selfish perspective, I’m in my mid-20s and my chances of dying from natural causes in the next say 20 years are pretty damn low, and this means that given my background beliefs about doom and timelines, slowing down AI is great deal from my perspective. While if I expected to die from old age in the next 5 years I would be a lot more opposed
A typical 25 year old man in the United States has around a 4.3% chance of dying before they turn 45 according to these actuarial statistics from 2019 (the most recent non-pandemic year in the data). I wouldn’t exactly call that “pretty damn low”, though opinions on these things differ. This is comparable to my personal credence that AIs will kill me in the next 20 years. And if AI goes well, it will probably make life really awesome. So from this narrowly selfish point of view I’m still not really convinced pausing is worth it.
Perhaps more importantly: do you not have any old family members that you care about?