Creating superintelligent artificial agents without a worldwide referendum is ethically unjustifiable. Until a consensus is reached on whether to bring into existence such technology, a global moratorium is required (n.b. we already have AGI).
yanni kyriacos
Karma: 1,580
This comment is in no man’s land: not funny enough to be a good joke, not relevant enough to add value.
Consider asking an LLM for feedback before posting. Unless the goal is to troll?
I think the kind of org you’re trying to incubate has a proven model, making it a safer bet than starting another type of AIS org.
Solving the AGI alignment problem demands a herculean level of ambition, far beyond what we’re currently bringing to bear. Dear Reader, grab a pen or open a google doc right now and answer these questions:
1) What would you do right now if you became 5x more ambitious?
2) If you believe we all might die soon, why aren’t you doing the ambitious thing?
“We think starting city- and national-level field-building organisations can be a valuable way to contribute to AI Safety.”
I agree ;)
It might also be the safest way to “incubate” an AI Safety organisation (for all the Entrepreneurs out there).
Hi Vasco! I’m keen for you to paint me a persona. Specifically; who is the kind of person that thinks sinking 10k into a bet with an EA (i.e. you) is a better use of money than all the other ways to help make AI go better (by making it as a donation)?
Even if you were big on bets for signalling purposes, I think its easy to argue that making one of this size with an EA on a niche forum isn’t the way to do it (i.e. find someone more prominent and influential on X or similar).
I think > 40% of AI Safety resources should be going into making Federal Governments take seriously the possibility of an intelligence explosion in the next 3 years due to proliferation of digital agents.
I think people need to start considering how pros and cons change if we get TAI in ≤ 4 years.
Sure, you built some career capital, but what was the cost (especially counterfactually)?
We might need more people to start asking the question; how can I have a hugely positive impact in the next 12 months?
The fucking arrogance is astonishing. To think you can just make this decision on behalf of <gestures broadly> literally everyone is hard to empathise with.
We are beginning to turn our aim beyond that, to superintelligence in the true sense of the word. We love our current products, but we are here for the glorious future. With superintelligence, we can do anything else.
Hey mate! It isn’t on the jobs board, but I have filled out their form. I appreciate your support!
I worked in advertising agencies for almost a decade. People there complain about terminology too. But it never gets fixed because that’s not how linguistics / culture works. This is an intractable problem and only useful for insiders who feel like venting.
Happy new year everyone! I’m extremely grateful to have this community in my life!
Thanks for clarifying! I’ve been taking 5mg for a couple of years. How much do you take? 5mg is a generic recommendation so I’m considering experimenting with higher doses.
Isn’t it even more important for people on vegan diets (e.g. me)? According to Claude:
- - - - - -
Creatine supplementation is particularly relevant for vegans for several biological reasons:The primary reason is that creatine is naturally found almost exclusively in animal products, particularly meat and fish. The human body can synthesize creatine from amino acids, but vegans typically have lower baseline creatine levels in their muscles since they don’t consume any dietary sources.
Your body’s natural creatine synthesis requires three amino acids: glycine, arginine, and methionine. While vegans can get these amino acids from plant sources, the total creatine levels tend to be lower than in omnivores. Research has shown that vegetarians and vegans typically have about 50-60% of the creatine muscle stores of people who eat meat.
Creatine is important because it helps:
- Produce ATP (energy) for short, intense activities
- Improve muscle strength and power output
- Support cognitive function
- Aid in muscle recovery and growthFor vegans specifically, supplementing with creatine can help bridge this nutritional gap and bring their creatine levels up to optimal ranges. Studies have shown that vegans and vegetarians often experience more pronounced benefits from creatine supplementation compared to meat-eaters, likely because they’re starting from a lower baseline.
The standard recommended dose (5g daily) works well for vegans, and creatine monohydrate is vegan-friendly as it’s typically synthesized from non-animal sources.
No worries :)
I personally think this is a conversation worth having, but I can imagine a bunch of reasons people wouldn’t want to. For one thing, it is a PR nightmare!
No problem :)
I didn’t want to read all of @Vasco Grilo🔸’s post on the “meat eating” problem and all 80+ comments, so I expanded all the comments and copy/pasted the entire webpage into Claude with the following prompt: “Please give me a summary of the authors argument (dot points, explained simply) and then give me a summary of the kinds of push back he got (dot points, explained simply, thematised, giving me a sense of the concentration/popularity of themes in the push back)”
Below is the result (the Forum team might want to consider how posts with large numbers of comments can be read quickly):The author claims that saving lives in developing countries might cause more harm than good in the short term because:
When people are saved from death, they consume animal products
The suffering of farm animals (especially chickens and farmed fish/shrimp) from being raised and killed outweighs the happiness of the human life saved
Using specific calculations, they estimate that one average person causes 15.5 times more animal suffering than human happiness globally (with higher ratios in some countries)
The author specifically criticizes two organizations:
GiveWell (for granting $1.09 billion without considering animal welfare impacts)
Ambitious Impact (for helping start 8 organizations that save lives without considering animal impacts)
The author suggests these organizations should:
Be more transparent about why they ignore animal welfare effects
Focus on interventions that don’t increase mortality (like mental health)
Offset harm to animals by funding animal welfare projects
Main themes in the pushback (ordered by rough frequency/engagement):
Moral/Philosophical Objections (Most Common):
Rejecting the premise that saving human lives could be net negative
Viewing it as morally repugnant to let children die because they might eat meat
Arguing that we shouldn’t hold people responsible for future choices they haven’t made yet
Methodological Critiques:
Questioning assumptions about consumption patterns of aid recipients
Noting that population growth doesn’t necessarily increase meat consumption proportionally
Pointing out that many aid recipients are too poor to consume significant amounts of animal products
Practical/Strategic Concerns:
Arguing that organizations like GiveWell don’t need to justify their focus on human welfare
Suggesting that offsetting through animal welfare donations is more practical than avoiding human welfare work
Noting that this type of reasoning could lead to harmful outcomes if applied broadly
Communication/Framing Concerns:
Suggesting the argument is unnecessarily divisive
Recommending changes to terminology (e.g., “meat eating problem” instead of “meat eater problem”)
Expressing concern about how this reflects on the EA community
The strongest pushback seemed to center around the moral implications of letting people die because of potential future actions, with many commenters finding this fundamentally problematic regardless of the utilitarian calculations involved.
Ah ok that makes sense :)
And you don’t mind taking money from ai safety causes to fund that? Or maybe you think that is a really good thing?
If I had ten grand (or one) to throw around I’d be putting that into my org or donating it to an AI Safety org. Do you think there are ways that a bet could be more useful than a donation for AI Safety? I’m struggling to see them.
If transformative AI is defined by its societal impact rather than its technical capabilities (i.e. TAI as process not a technology), we already have what is needed. The real question isn’t about waiting for GPT-X or capability Y—it’s about imagining what happens when current AI is deployed 1000x more widely in just a few years. This presents EXTREMELY different problems to solve from a governance and advocacy perspective.
E.g. 1: compute governance might no longer be a good intervention
E.g. 2: “Pause” can’t just be about pausing model development. It should also be about pausing implementation across use cases
AI Safety has less money, talent, political capital, tech and time. We have only one distinct advantage: support from the general public. We need to start working that advantage immediately.