I direct the AI:Futures and Responsibility Programme (https://www.ai-far.org/) at the University of Cambridge, which works on AI strategy, safety and governance. I also work on global catastrophic risks with the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk and AI strategy/policy with the Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
Sean_o_h
Karma: 3,053
I can’t imagine it helped in winning allies in Oxford, but relationship with Faculty/University was already highly dysfunctional. (I was consulted as part of a review re: FHI’s position within Oxford and various options before said personal controversies).
Also, there is famously quite a lot of antisemitism on the left and far left. Sidestepping the academic debate on whether antisemitism is or is not technically a form of racism, it seem strange to me to claim that racism-and-adjacent only exist on the right.
(for avoidance of doubt, I agree with the OP that Hanania seems racist, and not a good ally for this community)
April Fools is
A strange game.
The only high-utility move is
Not to play.
Huge congratulations, you have made the world better. Thank you.
I quite liked it, but I’d happily give up praise posts if it meant not having the denouncement posts.
Supervolcanoes being unlikely to be a human extinction risk was also my conclusion when I looked into it for an extinction risk review (currently under peer review) late last year, from speaking to volcanologists—McGraw (2024) was not released at that point so I’m grateful for this analysis and to be pointed to the paper.
Datapoint: I put money in my pension.
I agree. I suspect that responses to calls for evidence over the years played a big role in introducing and normalising xrisk research ideas in the UK context, before the big moves we’ve seen in the last year.
e.g. a few representative examples
(2016) https://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/science-and-technology-committee/robotics-and-artificial-intelligence/written/32690.pdf(2017)
(2022)
https://www.longtermresilience.org/post/future-of-compute-review-submission-of-evidence
And many more.
Not a perfect translation, but I like proto-EA and leading Irish language poet Sean O Riordain writing a poem about moral circle expansion back in 1971. (It reads a lot better in the original language).
https://comhar.ie/iris/81/5/ni-ceadmhach-neamhshuim/
Apathy Is Out
There’s not a fly, moth, bee,
man, or woman created by God
whose welfare’s not our responsibility;
to ignore their predicament
isn’t on.There’s not a madman in Mad Valley
we shouldn’t sit with
and keep company,
since
he’s sick in the head
on our behalf.There’s not a place, stream or bush, however remote;
or a flagstone
north, south, east or west
that we shouldn’t consider
without affection and empathy.
No matter how far South Africa,
no matter how distant the moon,
they’re part of us by right:
there’s not a single spot anywhere
we’re not a part of. We issue from everywhere.
> Cotton-Barratt could have been thrown out without any possibility of discussion. I am reliability told this is the policy of some UK universities.
Depending on what ‘discussion’ means here, I’d be surprised. It would be illegal to fire someone without due process. Whether discussion would be public as in here is a different matter; there tends to be a push towards confidentiality.
For balance: I’ve been an advocate for victims in several similar cases in UK universities, at least one of which was considerably more severe than what i’ve seen described in this case. I’ve encountered intervention and pressure from senior academic/administrative figures to discourage formal complaints being submitted, resulting in zero consequences for the perpetrator, and the victims leaving their roles. I would expect this to be the outcome more often on average than the very strong reaction Nathan describes.
Uh, the word in that screenshot is “meditating”. She was asking people to not talk too loudly while she was meditating.
I would strongly caution against doing so. Even if it turns out to be seemingly justified in this instance (and I offer no view either way whether it is or not), I cannot think of a more effective way of discouraging victims/whistleblowers from coming forward (in other cases in this community) in future situations.
Sutskever appears to have regrets:
https://twitter.com/ilyasut/status/1726590052392956028
This is both a very kind and a very helpful thing to offer. This is something that can help people an awful lot in terms of their career.
Good to know, thank you.
Yeah, unfortunately I suspect that “he claimed to be an altruist doing good! As part of this weird framework/community!” is going to be substantial part of what makes this an interesting story for writers/media, and what makes it more interesting than “he was doing criminal things in crypto” (which I suspect is just not that interesting on its own at this point, even at such a large scale).
Thank you for all your work, and I’m excited for your ongoing and future projects Will, they sound very valuable! But I hope and trust you will be giving equal attention to your well-being in the near-term. These challenges will need your skills, thoughtfulness and compassion for decades to come. Thank you for being so frank—I know you won’t be alone in having found this last year challenging mental health-wise, and it can help to hear others be open about it.
Stated more eloquently than I could have, SYA.
I’d also add that, were I to be offering advice to K & E, I’d probably advise taking more time. Reacting aggressively or defensively is all too human when facing the hurricane of a community’s public opinion—and that is probably not in anyone’s best interest. Taking the time to sit with the issues, and later respond more reflectively as you describe, seems advisable.
Balanced against that, whatever you think about the events described, this is likely to have been a very difficult experience to go through in such a public way from their perspective—one of them described it in this thread as “the worst thing to ever happen to me”. That may have affected their ability to respond promptly.
Strong +1 re: ‘hero’ work culture. especially for ops staff. This was one of the things that bothered me while there and contributed to my moving on—an (admittedly very nice) attitude of praising (especially admin/management) people who were working stupidly hard/long, rather than actually investing in fixing a clearly dysfunctional situation. And while it might not have been possible to fix later on due to embedded animosity/frustration on both sides ⇒ hiring freeze etc, it certainly was early on when I was there.
The admin load issue was not just about the faculty. And the breakdown of relationship with the faculty was really was not one-sided, at least when I was there (and I think I succeeded in semi-rescuing some of the key relationships (oxford martin school, faculty of philosophy) while I was there, at least temporarily).