Vaipan

• Vaipan 30 Jan 2024 10:02 UTC

  86 points

  49 ∶ 42

  on: EV in­ves­ti­ga­tion into Owen and Com­mu­nity Health

  I do not know Owen. I am however a bit worried to see two people in these comments advocating for Owen while this affair does not look good and the facts speak for themselves; there is a certain irony to see these two people coming to defend Owen while the community health head, Julia, admits to a certain level of bias when handling this affair since he was her friend. It seems that EA people do not learn from the mistakes that are courageously being owned up here. This posts talks about Owen misbehaving: it does not talk about Owen’s good deeds. So this kind of comment defeats the point of this post.

  Can you put yourself two seconds in the shoes of these women who received unwanted and pressing attention from Owen, with all the power dynamics that are involved, reading comments on how Owen is responsible and a great addition to the community, even after women repeatedly complained about him? What I read is ‘He treated me well, so don’t be so quick to dismiss him’ and ‘I’ve dealt with worse cases, so I can assure you this one is not that bad’.

  Do you really think that such attitudes encourage women to speak up? Do you really think that this is the place to do this?

  Edit: I want to thank those who have written this post and highlight the courage that it has taken. I know that I am flagging up the things that are not okay, e.g these comments, but I am very happy that this does not stay within community building circles and gets shared. Yeay for transparency, yay for honesty, yay for highlighting what is wrong if we want to do better. I know of instances where such bad press has been kept within closed doors, and I’m glad this one has not. So, thanks. I yell a lot (I wish I did not have to, of course) but I also want to be grateful.

[Question] How do you ad­dress tem­po­rary slump in work mo­ti­va­tion?

[Question] What hap­pened to the ‘only 400 peo­ple work in AI safety/​gov­er­nance’ num­ber dated from 2020?

• Vaipan 13 Dec 2023 9:42 UTC

  24 points

  24 ∶ 22

  on: Non­lin­ear’s Ev­i­dence: De­bunk­ing False and Mislead­ing Claims

  
  I won’t comment on who is right and who is wrong. That’s not what is relevant here in my opinion anyway. Rather the carelessness with which the money is used and the attitude behind, which gives ground to EA critics, and how could they be not wrong? If we trust the picture given by these people—luxurious salaries, luxurious retreats, carelessness about the money and romantic involvement with each other that leads to drama--, I’m ashamed to be an EA. The fact that no one comments on this worries me tremendously.

  This situation disappoints me deeply, and it prompts reflection on what is EA in such circles, and what should be EA. It’s disheartening to witness the allocation of funds in a manner that seemingly deviates from the core values of this movement.

  My concern extends beyond individual actions; what truly troubles me is the apparent lack of stewardship over financial resources. The discretion given to Chloé regarding her compensation, supposedly from funds “raised,” raises questions about accountability. Additionally, extravagant expenditures, like Ben’s $5000 for evaluating job applicants, appear starkly incongruent with the principles of effectiveness and impact that EA advocates.

  This isn’t about adopting a holier-than-thou stance, but rather about upholding the fundamental tenets of EA. It’s disconcerting to see substantial financial resources being directed towards luxurious AI retreats, seemingly deviating from the ethos I initially embraced within EA.

  Many within EA seek to make a meaningful difference through diligent, often challenging work—researching, striving for jobs aligned with their values, living modestly to contribute more to causes. EA, while predominantly associated with a specific demographic of rich white men in STEM (statistically that is what EA is, as the movement is around 90% white and 69% male) should not dismiss the struggles of those outside this stereotype.

  The recent focus on Nonlinear feels like a departure from the altruistic essence of EA. It stands in stark contrast to the ethos set forth by McAskill’s example of allocating the majority of his income to charitable causes.

  My concerns regarding Nonlinear’s operations in the Bahamas were met with a response emphasizing increased productivity without substantiated evidence. This lack of quantitative validation adds to the disillusionment surrounding the situation.

  Something needs to be done. Many valuable people are exiting the movement because of shady allocations of funds—isn’t that funny to read these posts about which charity is the best, penny-close wise, while la crème de la crème does luxurious AI safety retreats? This isn’t a ‘one-time type of thing’, this is well-known. And yet nothing is done. I will sound Cromwellian, but we need morals and reality-check for people in power. Nothing surprising, but it needs to be repeated, again.

  Oh, and I feel that this should be my signature: if you dislike my comment, why is that? So far I’ve received one comment nitpicking about how one AI safety retreat they know of is not luxury; aside from that, does anyone has anything to say about how poorly this reflects on EA? How a whole movement pays the PR price of the luxury lifestyle of a few? How this is plainly in contradiction with principles of effective altruism and nobody says anything because I assume the funder and the causes are hyped? I have a lot of respect for someone who funds something like Charity Entrepreneurship, it’s definitely one of the best things EA did. However the rest doesn’t speak in their favor and doesn’t justify this debauchery.

• Vaipan 27 Nov 2023 8:52 UTC

  15 points

  5 ∶ 7

  on: Vaipan’s Quick takes

  Reading McAskill’s AMA from 4 years ago about what would kill EA, I can’t help but find his predictions chillingly realistic!

  1. The brand or culture becomes regarded as toxic, and that severely hampers long-run growth. (Think: New Atheism) = OpenAI reshuffling and general focus on AI safety has increased the caution of the mainstream public towards EA

  2. A PR disaster, esp among some of the leadership. (Think: New Atheism and Elevatorgate) = SBF debacle!

  3. Fizzle—it just ekes along, but doesn’t grow very much, loses momentum and goes out of fashion = This one hasn’t happened yet but is the obviously structural one, still has a chance to happen

  When will we learn? I feel that we haven’t taken seriously the lessons from SBF given what happened at OpenAI and the split in the community concerning support for Altman and his crazy projects. Also, as a community builder who talks to a lot of people and who does outreach, I hear a lot of bad criticism concerning EA (‘self-obsessed tech bros wasting money’), and while it’s easy to think that these people speak out of ignorance, ignoring the criticism won’t make it go away.

  I would love to see more worry and more action around this.

• Vaipan 22 Sep 2023 7:44 UTC

  15 points

  5 ∶ 1

  on: Re­la­tion­ship be­tween EA Com­mu­nity and AI safety

  Would be nice to know what you are basing these diagrams on, other than intuition. If you are very present on the forum and mainly focused on AI of course that is going to be your intuition. Here are the dangers of this intuition I find to exist about this topic :

  It’s a self-reenforcing thing : people deep into AI or newly converted are much more likely to think that EA revolves essentially around AI, and people outside of AI might think ‘Oh that’s what the community is about now’ and don’t feel like they belong here. Someone who just lurks out there and see that the forum is now almost exclusively filled with posts on AI will now think that EA is definitely about longtermism.

  Funding is also a huge signal. With OpenPhil funding essentially AI and other longtermist projects, for someone who is struggling to find a job (yes we have a few talents who are being aked out everywhere but that’s not the case of the majority even for highly-educated EAs), it is easy to think in a opportunistic way and switch to AI out of necessity instead of conviction, see McAskill quote very relevantly cited by someone in the comments.

  And finally, the message given by people at the top. If CEA focuses a lot of Ai career switches and think of other career switches as neutral, of course community builders will focus on AI people. Which means, factually, more men with a STEM background (we have excellent women working at visible and prestigious jobs in AI that’s true, but unless we consciously try to find a concrete way of making women entering the field it is going to be difficult to maintain this, and this is not a priority so far) since the ratio men/​women in STEM is still very not in favor of women. The community might thus become even more masculine, and even more STEM (exception made to philosophers and policy-makers but the funds for such jobs are still scarce). I know this isn’t a problem for some here as many of the posts about diversity and their comments attest it, but for those who do see the problem with narrowing down even further, the point is made. And it’s just dangerous to focus on helping people switching to AI if in the need the number of jobs doesn’t grow as expected.

  So all the ingredients are there for EA to turn into a practically exclusively AI community, but as D. Nash said, differentiating between the two might actually be more fruitful.

  Also I’m not sure that I want to look back in five years and realize that what made the strength of EA—a highly diverse community in terms of interests and centers of impact, and a measurable impact in the world (I might be very wrong here but so far measuring impact for all these new AI orgs is difficult as we clearly lack data and it’s a new field of understanding--, has just disappeared. It’s OK to be seen as nerds and elitist (because let’s face it, that is how EA is seen in the mainstream) is fine as long as we have concrete impact to show for it, but if we become an exclusively technical community that is all about ML and AI governance, it is going to be even more difficult to get traction outside of EA (and we might want to care about that, as explained in a recent post on AI advocacy).

  I know I’m going against the grain here, but I like to think that all these ‘EA open to criticism’ thinggy is not a thing of the past. And I truly think that these points need to be addressed, instead of being drown under the new enthusiasm for AI. And if needed to be said : I do realize how important AI is, and how impactful working on it is. I just think that it is not enough to go all-AI, and that many here tend to forget other dynamics and factors playing because of the AI takeover in the community.

• Vaipan 27 Dec 2023 10:43 UTC

  12 points

  4 ∶ 4

  in reply to: Ben Millwood’s comment on: The priv­ilege of na­tive English speak­ers in reach­ing high-sta­tus, in­fluen­tial po­si­tions in EA

  But a core thing that you don’t mention (maybe because you are a native speaker, and you have to not be one to realize that, not being mean here but simply stating what I think is a fact), is that jargon adds to the effort.

  Not only you have to speak a flawless English and not mull over potential mistakes that potentially make you look foolish in the eyes of your interlocutor and reduce the credibility of your discourse, but you also have to use the right jargon. Add saying something meaningful in top of it: you have to pay attention to how you say things (language + jargon) and what you say.

  Try handling the feeling of inferiority that inevitably arises when your interlocutor speaks a perfect English and can focus 100% on the content only on what they say while you have to handle the language + the jargon + the meaning behind and that gives you a pretty good mix to feel like a fraud, especially when you disagree with someone. Try a sensitive topic, such as prioritizing x-risk over global health, and add all that mental load. Good luck!

• Vaipan 20 Sep 2023 14:40 UTC

  11 points

  2 ∶ 1

  on: My life would be much harder with­out the Com­mu­nity Health Team. I think yours might too.

  Would love to read some concrete examples of cases where the CHT made a difference, despite the ‘if it’s invisible it means that it is successful’ line of thinking that I fully understand. I also understand why some people say that CHT did not intervene in instances where it would have been necessary because the official line remains ‘CHT isn’t the EA police/​conflict solver’ when confronted with these questions.

• Vaipan 21 Oct 2023 13:13 UTC

  10 points

  2 ∶ 0

  in reply to: harfe’s comment on: Poli­tico ar­ti­cle on Open Phil, Hori­zon Fel­low­ship, and EA

  Sure! So far there are arguments showing how General AI could be created, or even superintelligence, but the timelines vary immensely from researcher to researcher and there is no data-based evidence that would justify pouring all this money into it? EA is supposed to be evidenced-based and yet all we seem to have are arguments, but not evidences? I understand this is the nature of these things, but it’s striking to see how efficient EA tries to be when it comes to measuring GiveWell’s impact VS the impact created by pouring money into AI safety for longtermist causes? It feels that impact evaluation when it comes to AI safety is non-existent at worse and not good at best (see useful post of RP about impact-based evidence regarding x-risks).

• Vaipan 12 Oct 2023 8:59 UTC

  10 points

  4 ∶ 0

  in reply to: NickLaing’s comment on: EA and SBF on the front page of BBC… and its OK!

  I agree with you Nick, when you say that we should present AI risks in a much more human way, I just don’t think that it’s the path taken by the loudest voices concerning AI risks right now, and that’s a shame. And I see no incompatibility between good epistemics and wanting to make the field of AI safety more inclusive and kind so that it includes everybody and not just software engineers who went into EA because there was money (see the post on the great amount of funding going to AI safety positions that are paid x3 compared to researchers working in hospitals etc), and prestige (they’ve been into ML for so long and now is their chance to get opportunities and recognition). I want to dive deeper into how much EA-oriented are these new EAs if we talk about the core-values that have created the EA movement.

  On a constructive note, as a community builder, I am raising projects from the ground whose aim to focus on the role of AI risks in regards to soaring inequalities or possibility of increasing the likelihood of AI being used by a tyrannic power, themes that have a clear signalling into impact for everyone, rather than staying in the realm of singletons and other abstract figures because it’s just intellectually satisfying to think about these things.

• Vaipan 11 Oct 2023 15:45 UTC

  10 points

  4 ∶ 1

  on: EA and SBF on the front page of BBC… and its OK!

  It’s interesting that all the aforementioned examples of why EA does good concretely are all pertaining to global health and development, while EA is becoming highly skewed towards AI risks and longtermist causes, where it is going to be much more difficult to justify the good that can potentially be done. Advocating for EA will be much more difficult in the coming years, sadly.

[Question] Ev­i­dence to pri­ori­tize or work­ing on AI as the most im­pact­ful thing?

• Vaipan 8 Jan 2024 23:21 UTC

  9 points

  4 ∶ 2

  on: Zach Robin­son will be CEA’s next CEO

  While its great that strong voices in this community such as Ord, MacAskill and others have come guaranteeing Zach’s great qualities, I would like to read about Zach’s concrete work, failures and achievements. This community lives to defer, and this seems like a great representative example of that, unfortunately I’m not sure how relevant it is here.

  All I know about him is that he worked on global health and has tight relationships with Anthropic, thus AI safety. It’s great for sure, I love the apparent ability to care about many causes at the same time. But what did he do? What is his path? How did he overcome challenges? What does he fail at? What embodies the most his greatness work-wise, which projects? And more importantly: for what impact?

• Vaipan 19 Oct 2023 9:44 UTC

  7 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: AMA: Six Open Philan­thropy staffers dis­cuss OP’s new GCR hiring round

  Thank you for doing this! Highly helpful, and transparent, we need more of this. I have many questions, mostly on a meta-level, but the part about AI safety is what I’d preferred to be answered.

  About AI safety :

  • What kind of impact or successes do you expect by hiring these 3 seniors roles in AI safety? Can you detail a bit the impact value expected by the creation of these roles?

  • Do you think that the AI safety field is talent-constrained at the senior level, but has its fair share of junior positions already filled?

  About the ratio of hires between AI safety and biorisks:

  • Given the high number of positions in biosafety, should we conclude that the field is more talent-constrained than AI safety that seem to need less workforce?

  More diverse consideration about GCR

  • Do you intend to dedicate any of these roles to nuclear risks to help a bit the lack of funding in the field of nuclear risk, or is it rated rather low in your prioritization cause ranking?

  About cause-prioritization positions

  • What kind of projects do you intend to launch/​can you be more specific about the topics that will be researched in this area? Also, what kind of background knowledge is needed for such a job?

  Thank you so much for your answers!

• Vaipan 12 Oct 2023 9:34 UTC

  7 points

  2 ∶ 1

  on: Causes and Uncer­tainty: Re­think­ing Value in Expectation

  Thank your for seriously tackling a topic that seems to be overlooked despite its huge significance.

[Question] Is there a re­cap of rele­vant jobs in the nu­clear risk sec­tor/​nu­clear en­ergy sec­tor for EAs?

• Vaipan 8 Apr 2024 8:02 UTC

  6 points

  0 ∶ 0

  in reply to: Joseph Lemien’s comment on: Con­sid­er­ing pledg­ing but haven’t? Help us un­der­stand!

  Hey Joseph,

  I am exactly in the same boat, very specialized path and lack of financial visibility. I also work for an EA org, which means that I chose a pay cut (and the role is time-constrained in terms of funding) compared to other jobs that could be safer (consulting, etc).

  But recently, I’ve been thinking about the fact that donating is a bit like starting a new sport class or any new habit; if you don’t start, you’ll never start (except under ideal conditions but that rarely happens!). Accepting a bit of risk to accomplish something that you care a lot about makes sense for me, which is why I will start giving soon. There will never be a threshold of financial safety where I’ll feel completely safe, so waiting will not do good to me.

  Also, inflation means that all my careful savings are losing value right now, so I’m realizing that I would be better off spending a part of it now rather than wait and see their value slowly disappearing.

  This is only my choice; I just wanted to comment since I am a bit in the same case but came to think differently about it recently. Also just want to empathize with your situation. Sometimes I feel bad when I see that some of my colleagues have been giving for ten years, but again, we clearly were not given the same set of circumstances at birth.

• Vaipan 4 Mar 2024 15:39 UTC

  6 points

  1 ∶ 0

  on: Defense Job Ethics

  I’ve sent your post to someone who has 20+ years of experience in the field of US intelligence and who has recently gone into EA, you might be contacted by them soon! Happy to read this kind of post anyway—this kind of thoughts does definitely not cross everyone’s mind when faced with such a situation.

• Vaipan 20 Oct 2023 7:39 UTC

  6 points

  4 ∶ 4

  in reply to: Calum’s comment on: Poli­tico ar­ti­cle on Open Phil, Hori­zon Fel­low­ship, and EA

  EA people might have written thousands of posts on the reason behind the dangers of AI, but these posts were made for the community, assuming people already believed in Bostrom’s work etc. These posts have a certain jargon and assume many things that the mainstream audience doesn’t assume at all. And talking about advocacy about AI is still very much debated and far from granted (see the recent post on advocacy on the forum, I can link it if people are confused). Also the way OpenPhil advocates money and its clear concentration on CGR detrimentally to more neartermist, globah health causes is a fact, and their influence on Congress is also a fact. Facts can be skewed towards a certain thinking perspective, true, but they’re there.

  Despite the feeling some might have—that most in EA consider existential risks related to AI as THE most pressing issue, I’m not sure how true that is. The forum is a nice screen of smoke given that people posting and commenting on these posts are always the same, and Rethink Priorities survey is NOT representative—I ran the number of my own EA group with the trends that were evoked for my group on the RP priorities and it doesn’t align, it’s clearly skewed towards a minority that is always on the forum and AI afficionados.

  So we can be mad all we want and rant that these journalists are dense (I don’t deny Politico bad coverage of EA btw, it’s just not the only journal making these conclusions), as long as we don’t take advocacy seriously and try to get these arguments out there, nothing better will happen. So let’s take these articles as an opportunity to do better, instead of taking our arguments for granted. There is work to do about this inside and outside the community.

  And let me anticipate the downvotes that these opinions usually get me (quite bad btw for the a community that is supposed to seek truth and not just cede to the human impulsion of ’I don’t like it, I’ll downvote it without arguing): if you disagree on these specific points, let me know why. Be constructive. It’s also an issue: imagine a journalist creating an account to understand better the EA community and comment on the posts who gets downvoted every time he dares raising negative opinions/​asking uncomfortable questions about AI safety. Well, so much for our ability to be constructive.

• Vaipan 22 Aug 2023 10:16 UTC

  6 points

  6 ∶ 9

  on: An Elephant in the Com­mu­nity Build­ing room

  I have mixed-feelings concerning your post. I commend it for being so clear and easily understandable. There are trends in EA, and yours go into the ‘Let’s narrow EA because diversity is overrated’. As you say, you have no empirical evidence that diversity is bad ; and I will just give a few qualitative examples to demonstrate the opposite, so my level of confidence is around 55%, no more. Sorry in advance if the arguments I’ll lay will be hard to take in. Again, this is only my hunch.

  1. It is well-known mechanism for people previously on the margins who have succeeded into prestigious, privileged places to be against diversity. I think about Priti Patel or Rishi Sunak ; take me in, but don’t let anyone enter after me. I believe this comes from a desire of being liked by those who you admire and want to feel as an equal—turning back on the very people you could have belonged to if you had been born ten years later is a way to legitimize your ozn belonging to the prestigious, powerful group. To push further, because it’s not you being ‘mean’, it stems from a place of self-doubt. You are not sure you deserve to be here (cf you referring not being better than your Boston pals) so its easier to think others like you don’t. There is a sociological field that explains such attitude, but I can’t find it now sadly. Some kind of survivor bias.

  2. I do think that fellow South Africans or people coming from low-income countries can bring insights EAs in wealthy countries can’t. Thats the reason why the UN recruits people from these countries instead of giving the job to a white, wealthy candidate from a first world country who just got their masters in development. Its because people from these countries have experience living in these countries, and this a major arguments for global aid projects , which remain very important as McAskill said in a post here not a long time ago. AI devouring the rest of EA fields is a great concern for many, and I belong to those who think that AI is a big thing on its own—it requires a set of skills and political connections that must be separated from animal welfare, global aid, etc. I can develop if needed. AI is vastly important. AI is not the core of EA (yet, I hope).

  3. ‘Something which is largely just a nod to political correctness or a lost sense of global justice’ and there lies a big worry of mine. As an historian, I know that progress is not linear, and that progress is won by hard work (listen to the 80k podcast about slavery not being inevitable at all). This kind of argument is a pushback from a group of people who do not like to share resources, power and influence. And we see this pushback happening every single time progress is made, every time a group gets rights they were denied previously under false pretenses (racism or misogyny is a false pretense in my opinion). The problem here is that there is a hardcore group of people inside EA who do not relinquish competition from other people. Yeah, I know, EA is not supposed to be political. And I shall not be: my view is very pragmatic and I want the best people to do good.

  I know that such discourse isn’t well-viewed in the community. And yet every day I see excellent people from the ‘diversity’ pool (understand women/​non-white/​non-STEM) being great at their new job, that they would not have gotten ten years ago before all the ‘political correctness’ talks. I intend to write a post giving figures as to why diversity is, in fact, necessary to keep producing the best people. And to give actionable answers. I expect pushback—that is the course of history :)

  So, people. Think, I beg you. It is scary to have the feeling that while it is already hard to get an EA job, you have to compete with an always bigger pool of applicants because we give a chance to everyone. But if you care about impact, it is a reality everyone should accept.

  I see that I am regularly downvoted, just like I was expecting, but I was expecting people to least answer in response, explaining their reasoning. Because it’s now easy to qssume that I am being downvoted by people who fear competition and refuse diversity for selfish reasons. Ockham razor here.

  Edit: I see that either I’m not conveying my point well, or that people aren’t ready to hear this. I still think that this ‘pulling up the ladder behind’ thinking applies to OP, and if it’s offensive to say that, I’m sorry, and I mean it. I don’t see how it is offensive—they don’t know me, they don’t care about what I think of them, so if it’s not on a personal level, I don’t see how this is hurtful. If someone accuses me of being something I don’t think I am, I’ll brush it off—I know myself, and if it bothers me I’ll try to see if it’s because there is a parcel of truth or not at all. I don’t want to be mean or personal, I just think it’s a valuable thinking process to shed light on.

  What doesn’t help is tthis feeling of everyone walking on eggshells when it comes to race or women, because one is afraid to say the wrong things/​think that approaching these topics is useless and overrated. Even in our EA group which is probably one of the most progressive on earth about these issues, I know people feel these things I just talked about (they told me).

  I might also be wrong and misunderstand completely what the author and his supporters think, and maybe all these people are very inclusive and care abot diversity. The focus on impact is absolutely understandable but it feels like an excuse—it doesn’t justify narrowing down and being elitist for me. Both aren’t incompatible, quite the opposite. But we’re not there yet. I don’t know what I should do—I still stand by my comments, but I don’t see the point of discussing this further, and I would not want people to think that I have stopped responding because I realize that I’m wrong but I don’t have the guts to acknowledge it. I just feel very, very tired of meeting hostility when I talk about these topics in this community.