We’ve extended application to the 2025 Q1 Pivotal Research Fellowship!
We think this could be a great opportunity for many on the Forum!
Deadline: Tuesday 26. November.
Tobias Häberli
Karma: 1,311
Deadline Extended to Tuesday 26. November!
You can recommend others who may be a good fit. We’ll give you $100 for each accepted candidate we contact through you.
Since Longtermism as a concept doesn’t seem widely appealing, I wonder how other time-focused ethical frameworks fare, such as Shorttermism (Focusing on immediate consequences), Mediumtermism (Focusing on foreseeable future), or Atemporalism (Ignoring time horizons in ethical considerations altogether).
I’d guess these concepts would also be unpopular, perhaps because ethical considerations centered on timeframes feel confusing, too abstract or even uncomfortable for many people.
If true, it could mean that any theory framed in opposition, such as a critique of Shorttermism or Longtermism, might be more appealing than the time-focused theory itself. Critizising short-term thinking is an applause light in many circles.
You probably know much more about U.S. politics than I do, so I can’t engage deeply on whether these things are really happening or how unusual they might be.
However, I suspect that much of what you’re attributing to the Democratic party is actually due to a broader trend of U.S. elites becoming more left-leaning and Democrat-voting. Even if I agreed that this shift was bad for democracy, I’m not sure how voting for Trump would fix it in the long run. A Trump presidency would likely push elites even further toward left-leaning politics.
Regarding point 1.
You’re framing the situation as a choice between ‘Trump, who is willing to subvert democracy’ and ‘the Democratic Party, who is willing to subvert democracy’. This framing implicitly acknowledges that Harris is not (especially) willing to subvert democracy.It’s very plausible to believe that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are roughly equally willing to subvert democracy, especially given the significant influence Trump has on the Republican Party.
It then becomes a choice between:
Trump and the Republican Party, who are both willing to subvert democracy
vs.
The Democratic Party, who are willing to subvert democracy, and Harris, who is not.
In this comparison, Harris’s apparent commitment to democratic norms becomes the deciding factor in how you evaluate the overall democraticness of the choices.
Unfortunately, your shutdown announcement didn’t meet our bar. However, it was in the top 5% of rejected shutdowns, and we strongly encourage you to announce a shutdown in the next iteration.
We also encourage you to share this opportunity with others who may be a good fit. If we accept any fellow we contacted based on your recommendation, you’ll receive $100 for each accepted candidate. The recommendation form is here.
Pivotal Research is looking for a Operations & Community Manager for our 2024 Research Fellowship.
Employment Period: As soon as possible (subject to availability) to September 2024
Location: London (preferred in-person)
Employment Work-Load: 0.7 – 1 FTE
Salary Range: GBP 4,000 − 5,000 per month for 1 FTE (depending on background and experience)
Deadline: April 17th, 23:59 (CET+1), Apply Here
For the 2024 Research Fellowship, Pivotal Research (previously known as CHERI) is looking for a dedicated Operations & Community Manager to join the team. This role presents a unique opportunity to make a substantial impact in the global catastrophic risk (GCR) field by providing crucial support to the fellowship. The Operations & Community Manager will enjoy significant autonomy and decision-making authority, enabling them to play a key role in ensuring the success of the research fellowship. This position is ideal for individuals passionate about operational excellence and community engagement, aiming to contribute meaningfully to the advancement of GCR research.
Hi Oscar, thanks for the question! To clarify, only the fellowship has moved to the UK, not our entire organisation.
We’ve thought a lot about the pros and cons of moving from Switzerland and largely agree with your points.[1] The main driver for our decision was Switzerland’s comparatively small GCR network.
We see the fellowship as an opportunity to immerse fellows in a rich intellectual environment, which London’s – and especially LISA’s – GCR ecosystem offers. Our experience of running fellowships outside of established hubs suggests that fellowships alone are not a great vehicle to build a new GCR hub due to their seasonal nature and limited ability to retain people long-term. Nevertheless, we do see significant value in diversification and are considering future projects outside established GCR hubs for this reason.
Hope this explains our thinking, happy to answer more questions.
- ^
Mentor access isn’t a huge concern for us, since we expect most mentor-mentee interactions to happen virtually either way.
- ^
“Profits for investors in this venture [ETA: OpenAI] were capped at 100 times their investment (though thanks to a rule change this cap will rise by 20% a year starting in 2025).”
I stumbled upon this quote in this recent Economist article [archived] about OpenAI. I couldn’t find any good source that supports the claim additionally, so this might not be accurate. The earliest mention I could find for the claim is from January 17th 2023 although it only talks about OpenAI “proposing” the rule change.If true, this would make the profit cap less meaningful, especially for longer AI timelines. For example, a 1 billion investment in 2023 would be capped at ~1540 times in 2040.
Require that developers of the most powerful AI systems share their safety test results and other critical information with the U.S. government. In accordance with the Defense Production Act, the Order will require that companies developing any foundation model that poses a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety must notify the federal government when training the model, and must share the results of all red-team safety tests.
Would the information in this quote fall under any of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemptions, particularly those concerning national security or confidential commercial information/trade secrets? Or would there be other reasons why it wouldn’t become public knowledge through FOIA requests?
As far as I understand the plan is for it to be a (sort of?) national/governmental institute.[1] The UK government has quite a few scientific institutes. It might be the first in the world of that kind.
- ^
In this article from early October, the phrasing implies that it would be tied to the UK government:
Sunak will use the second day of Britain’s upcoming two-day AI summit to gather “like-minded countries” and executives from the leading AI companies to set out a roadmap for an AI Safety Institute, according to five people familiar with the government’s plans.
The body would assist governments in evaluating national security risks associated with frontier models, which are the most advanced forms of the technology.
The idea is that the institute could emerge from what is now the United Kingdom’s government’s Frontier AI Taskforce[...].
- ^
Thanks for the context, didn’t know that!
SBF was additionally charged with bribing Chinese officials with $40 million. Caroline Ellison testified in court that they sent a $150 million bribe.
GiveWell didn’t lose $900 million to fraud. GiveDirectly lost $900′000 to fraud.
My hope and expectation is that neither will be focused on EA
I’d be surprised [p<0.1] if EA was not a significant focus of the Michael Lewis book – but agree that it’s unlikely to be the major topic. Many leaders at FTX and Alameda Research are closely linked to EA. SBF often, and publically, said that effective altruism was a big reason for his actions. His connection to EA is interesting both for understanding his motivation and as a story-telling element. There are Manifold prediction markets on whether the book would mention 80′000h (74%), Open Philanthropy (74%), and Give Well (80%), but these markets aren’t traded a lot and are not very informative.[1]
This video titled The Fake Genius: A $30 BILLION Fraud (2.8 million views, posted 3 weeks ago) might give a glimpse of how EA could be handled. The video touches on EA but isn’t centred on it. It discusses the role EAs played in motivating SBF to do earning to give, and in starting Alameda Research and FTX. It also points out that, after the fallout at Alameda Research, ‘higher-ups’ at CEA were warned about SBF but supposedly ignored the warnings. Overall, the video is mainly interested in the mechanisms of how the suspected fraud happened, where EA is only one piece of the puzzle. One can equally get a sense of “EA led SBF to do fraud” as “SBF used EA as a front to do fraud”.
ETA:
The book description[2] “mentions “philanthropy”, makes it clear that it’s mainly about SBF and not FTX as a firm, and describes the book as partly a psychological portrait.- ^
I also created a similar market for CEA, but with 2 mentions as the resolving criteria. One mention is very likely as SBF worked briefly for them.
- ^
“In Going Infinite Lewis sets out to answer this question, taking readers into the mind of Bankman-Fried, whose rise and fall offers an education in high-frequency trading, cryptocurrencies, philanthropy, bankruptcy, and the justice system. Both psychological portrait and financial roller-coaster ride, Going Infinite is Michael Lewis at the top of his game, tracing the mind-bending trajectory of a character who never liked the rules and was allowed to live by his own—until it all came undone.”
- ^
(Not sure if this is within the scope of what you’re looking for. )
I’d be excited about having something like a roundtable with people who have been through 80′000h advising – talking about how their thinking about their career has changed, advice for people in a similar situation, etc. I’d imagine this could be a good fit for 80k After Hours?
On Microsoft Edge (the browser) there’s a “read aloud” option that offers a range of natural voices for websites and PDFs. It’s only slightly worse than speechify and free – and can give a glimpse of whether $139/year might be worth it for you.
I think that a very simplified ordering for how to impress/gain status within EA is:
Disagreement well-justified ≈ Agreement well-justified >>> Agreement sloppily justified > Disagreement sloppily justified
Looking back on my early days interacting with EAs, I generally couldn’t present well-justified arguments. I then did feel pressure to agree on shaky epistemic grounds. Because I sometimes disagreed nevertheless, I suspect that some parts of the community were less accessible to me back then.
I’m not sure about what hurdles to overcome if you want EA communities to push towards ‘Agreement sloppily justified’ and ‘Disagreement sloppily justified’ being treated similarly.
Exciting to hear about your growing team! I noticed the team page hasn’t been updated recently – are you able to share more about the new team members and their roles?