8 ms·

I think the biggest problem with the Effective Altruism movement is that it has become too tied up with people who like to debate things, especially topics like

I think the biggest problem with the Effective Altruism movement is that it has become too tied up with people who like to debate things, especially topics like AI Risk. Optimizing the effectiveness of one's charitable donations is a reasonable goal. Doing basic research to choose efficient and effective charities makes sense. However, there are large parts of the EA community that have gone off the deep end of debating topics like AI Risk. This has given rise to weird situations where EA communities have wasted countless hours debating whether it's better to donate mosquito nets to combat malaria, or to give money to research institutions that are studying the risks of general AI. 2 of the top 3 biggest donations from Open Philanthropy are to study AI risk. The 80,000 hours community has spent years creating podcasts and websites, but it's still difficult to extract actionable information from it. It's all becoming increasingly nebulous, and frustratingly so.

rossnordby 6y ago
Without touching on the specifics of AI risk, it's worth noting that any approach which takes into account the marginal value of additional dollars towards a cause and 'room for funding' will tend to lean towards things outside of the charitable Overton window. The 'obvious' cause areas are often already attended to, by virtue of being obvious. Picking the low hanging fruit means more money towards the same causes will tend to become less effective per dollar. People aren't that great about planning for, or responding to, black swans. By nature, they're something people don't tend to think about. Existential risks are black swans dialed up to 11 in both magnitude of effect and in weirdness, so it's not surprising when they end up underfunded.
z77dj3kl 6y ago
I agree, I think the image of Effective Altruism is largely shaped by the somewhat unique group of people who flock to it — in particular those who are very vocal about it.
FeepingCreature 6y ago
If you are unclear between AMF (bed nets) and AI Risk, and you find AI Risk dubious, then donate to AMF. It sounds like you're complaining that your choices have been pared down to two, and you don't like one of them.
- austhrow743 6y ago
  Reads to me like they've been consuming a lot of the output of other peoples recreation, despite not wanting to, and are now complaining about those people having left it somewhere where they could read it.
- notahacker 6y ago
  I think the pared down bit is important: the whole point behind EA is to increase giving to some types of organization at the expense of giving to other types of organization based on success metrics. So if leading EA initiatives are dissuading (say) giving to electrify Africa because of a lack of efficacy data or wealth of existing funding, they might event be having a quantitative negative impact on those particular causes. If they instead promote an already exceptionally well-funded AI research project their friends work for whose impact on Microsoft's share price is much easier to quantify than their impact on preventing Hypothetical Cyberpunk Future, then that's a questionable/bad decision under their own utilitarian framework. Even if they're generating enormous interest in philanthropy and analytical rigour overall, the bit where they might be discouraging people from choosing better causes than the ones they choose is a problem. Ultimately people have a right to donate their money to the causes they want whether it's having a quantifiable impact on reducing human suffering, taking moonshots on interesting speculative stuff or funding their ex-roomate's creative pursuits, but the whole point of the E in EA is to prioritise the former over the latter. If leading EA organizations are inconsistent in the standards they apply, that's a problem for those particular organizations, and if it turns out that future AI risk and basic services for poor people tomorrow simply aren't readily comparable, that's a problem for the whole EA optimization framework.
  - FeepingCreature 6y ago
    The point of EA is to prioritize E for people who want to be E, and to help people in general to make informed decisions. If you think raising up your city or your country is unboundedly more important than raising up, say, Africa, then EA supports you making the best decision in that framework. But it's still silly that we expect everyone to independently evaluate charity choice in depth on, basically, the basis of their advertisement material. And people will usually either not care, or want to do the most good they can do, period. It's a rare case of a person who wants to do the most good they can for their country, but stops caring at the border. > So if leading EA initiatives are dissuading (say) giving to electrify Africa because of a lack of efficacy data or wealth of existing funding, they might event be having a quantitative negative impact on those particular causes. Well, yes, spending is zero sum. On the other hand, this creates an incentive to gather efficacy data, which I enormously welcome. The point isn't to maximize moneyflow to charity, the point is to maximize good things happening. > an already exceptionally well-funded AI research project their friends work for whose impact on Microsoft's share price is much easier to quantify than their impact on preventing Hypothetical Cyberpunk Future I don't understand what this means. At any rate, Microsoft share price is not generally seen as a negative. If a project that buys Microsoft compute nodes has positive value for the world, it would be stupid not to fund it just because doing so also happened to be good for Microsoft. edit: Oh yeah, inasmuch as AI safety as a cause is well-funded now it's because of Effective Altruism raising the alarm to begin with - and AI capability research still outstrips it a hundred times over. Frankly, what I'm seeing with EA is that ... like, Effective Altruism started out talking about maximizing the amount of good for the world, and the "weird AI people" were the ones who showed up. And it's not like it's a contradiction either, inasmuch as EA now focuses less on earning to give, it's because people like Bill Gates, once-leader of Microsoft, have Malaria handled. Focusing on tech people seems to have been very good for the Malaria cause. So to come in now, years later, and to say that EA shouldn't have focused on the weird AI thing because it might put off some other people who never gave a damn to begin with is almost insulting.
exdsq 6y ago
I had this problem with EA too, however after getting involved with the community I found few people really focus on this topic - it just so happens it's a "sexier" topic than medicine to treat blindness or whatever so it's talked about and shared more online. I am a member of giving what we can and 'hedge my bets' by donating 1% of my total donation to these just in case I'm wrong, but I know many others who won't touch it with a barge pole.
akvadrako 6y ago
The focus on AI risk is because it seems to be the #1 long-term existential risk, so it has essentially an infinite payoff. But we have idea how to solve it (it's not tractable) and future concerns should be discounted, so most people in EA I've met don't think it's the best use of effort.
- astrange 6y ago
  > The focus on AI risk is because it seems to be the #1 long-term existential risk, so it has essentially an infinite payoff. You can read "AI risk" as "not going to Hell" here; rationalism is just a new religion focused on worshipping what SF writers think computers are going to get up to in the future (Roko's basilisk). There's not much reason to believe an evil AI out to conquer the world is a self-consistent idea.
  - FeepingCreature 6y ago
    I'm willing to bet you got all your info on this topic from RationalWiki. A note: the author of that page has a bone to pick with rationalism. Don't take it as gospel, read other sources. (The Basilisk gets discussed about a million times more on pages about LessWrong than the actual LessWrong. It's a decision-theoretic curiosity.)
    - astrange 6y ago
      I don't even know what that is. Most of my information comes from personal observation of their blogs and observing that they are all in polycules.
      - FeepingCreature 6y ago
        That's fair enough. edit: actually in that case > There's not much reason to believe an evil AI out to conquer the world is a self-consistent idea. Wanna argue this? The case is mostly based on the notion of basic AI drives ( https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_driv... ), indicating that for nearly any agentic (with general intelligence and capable of plan generation and execution) system driven by nearly any goal, perpetuating its own existence and protecting itself from danger will be instrumentally useful. (For an AI, "danger" = "human with off switch")

rossnordby 6y ago

Without touching on the specifics of AI risk, it's worth noting that any approach which takes into account the marginal value of additional dollars towards a cause and 'room for funding' will tend to lean towards things outside of the charitable Overton window. The 'obvious' cause areas are often already attended to, by virtue of being obvious. Picking the low hanging fruit means more money towards the same causes will tend to become less effective per dollar. People aren't that great about planning for, or responding to, black swans. By nature, they're something people don't tend to think about. Existential risks are black swans dialed up to 11 in both magnitude of effect and in weirdness, so it's not surprising when they end up underfunded.

z77dj3kl 6y ago

I agree, I think the image of Effective Altruism is largely shaped by the somewhat unique group of people who flock to it — in particular those who are very vocal about it.

FeepingCreature 6y ago

If you are unclear between AMF (bed nets) and AI Risk, and you find AI Risk dubious, then donate to AMF. It sounds like you're complaining that your choices have been pared down to two, and you don't like one of them.

austhrow743 6y ago
Reads to me like they've been consuming a lot of the output of other peoples recreation, despite not wanting to, and are now complaining about those people having left it somewhere where they could read it.
notahacker 6y ago
I think the pared down bit is important: the whole point behind EA is to increase giving to some types of organization at the expense of giving to other types of organization based on success metrics. So if leading EA initiatives are dissuading (say) giving to electrify Africa because of a lack of efficacy data or wealth of existing funding, they might event be having a quantitative negative impact on those particular causes. If they instead promote an already exceptionally well-funded AI research project their friends work for whose impact on Microsoft's share price is much easier to quantify than their impact on preventing Hypothetical Cyberpunk Future, then that's a questionable/bad decision under their own utilitarian framework. Even if they're generating enormous interest in philanthropy and analytical rigour overall, the bit where they might be discouraging people from choosing better causes than the ones they choose is a problem. Ultimately people have a right to donate their money to the causes they want whether it's having a quantifiable impact on reducing human suffering, taking moonshots on interesting speculative stuff or funding their ex-roomate's creative pursuits, but the whole point of the E in EA is to prioritise the former over the latter. If leading EA organizations are inconsistent in the standards they apply, that's a problem for those particular organizations, and if it turns out that future AI risk and basic services for poor people tomorrow simply aren't readily comparable, that's a problem for the whole EA optimization framework.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  The point of EA is to prioritize E for people who want to be E, and to help people in general to make informed decisions. If you think raising up your city or your country is unboundedly more important than raising up, say, Africa, then EA supports you making the best decision in that framework. But it's still silly that we expect everyone to independently evaluate charity choice in depth on, basically, the basis of their advertisement material. And people will usually either not care, or want to do the most good they can do, period. It's a rare case of a person who wants to do the most good they can for their country, but stops caring at the border. > So if leading EA initiatives are dissuading (say) giving to electrify Africa because of a lack of efficacy data or wealth of existing funding, they might event be having a quantitative negative impact on those particular causes. Well, yes, spending is zero sum. On the other hand, this creates an incentive to gather efficacy data, which I enormously welcome. The point isn't to maximize moneyflow to charity, the point is to maximize good things happening. > an already exceptionally well-funded AI research project their friends work for whose impact on Microsoft's share price is much easier to quantify than their impact on preventing Hypothetical Cyberpunk Future I don't understand what this means. At any rate, Microsoft share price is not generally seen as a negative. If a project that buys Microsoft compute nodes has positive value for the world, it would be stupid not to fund it just because doing so also happened to be good for Microsoft. edit: Oh yeah, inasmuch as AI safety as a cause is well-funded now it's because of Effective Altruism raising the alarm to begin with - and AI capability research still outstrips it a hundred times over. Frankly, what I'm seeing with EA is that ... like, Effective Altruism started out talking about maximizing the amount of good for the world, and the "weird AI people" were the ones who showed up. And it's not like it's a contradiction either, inasmuch as EA now focuses less on earning to give, it's because people like Bill Gates, once-leader of Microsoft, have Malaria handled. Focusing on tech people seems to have been very good for the Malaria cause. So to come in now, years later, and to say that EA shouldn't have focused on the weird AI thing because it might put off some other people who never gave a damn to begin with is almost insulting.

exdsq 6y ago

I had this problem with EA too, however after getting involved with the community I found few people really focus on this topic - it just so happens it's a "sexier" topic than medicine to treat blindness or whatever so it's talked about and shared more online. I am a member of giving what we can and 'hedge my bets' by donating 1% of my total donation to these just in case I'm wrong, but I know many others who won't touch it with a barge pole.

akvadrako 6y ago

The focus on AI risk is because it seems to be the #1 long-term existential risk, so it has essentially an infinite payoff. But we have idea how to solve it (it's not tractable) and future concerns should be discounted, so most people in EA I've met don't think it's the best use of effort.

astrange 6y ago
> The focus on AI risk is because it seems to be the #1 long-term existential risk, so it has essentially an infinite payoff. You can read "AI risk" as "not going to Hell" here; rationalism is just a new religion focused on worshipping what SF writers think computers are going to get up to in the future (Roko's basilisk). There's not much reason to believe an evil AI out to conquer the world is a self-consistent idea.
- FeepingCreature 6y ago
  I'm willing to bet you got all your info on this topic from RationalWiki. A note: the author of that page has a bone to pick with rationalism. Don't take it as gospel, read other sources. (The Basilisk gets discussed about a million times more on pages about LessWrong than the actual LessWrong. It's a decision-theoretic curiosity.)
  - astrange 6y ago
    I don't even know what that is. Most of my information comes from personal observation of their blogs and observing that they are all in polycules.
    - FeepingCreature 6y ago
      That's fair enough. edit: actually in that case > There's not much reason to believe an evil AI out to conquer the world is a self-consistent idea. Wanna argue this? The case is mostly based on the notion of basic AI drives ( https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_drives_final.pdf https://selfawaresystems.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/ai_driv... ), indicating that for nearly any agentic (with general intelligence and capable of plan generation and execution) system driven by nearly any goal, perpetuating its own existence and protecting itself from danger will be instrumentally useful. (For an AI, "danger" = "human with off switch")