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The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety, at least in what they publish online. If they talked about all possible thr

The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety, at least in what they publish online. If they talked about all possible threats to humanity and how to solve them, from AI, to climate change, to nuclear bombs, to asteroids, to disease, they would be an interesting and important group. They don't. They hardly talk about anything else except AI. From the outside it looks a lot like an obsession. Personally I think they treat AI as an existential threat above all others because they consider themselves to be the pinnacle of intelligence in the universe and AI is showing that human intelligence might not be so special after all. So it's an existential threat to their sense of self. Other existential threats merely threaten their lives and are therefore not as important. This would be fine, if acknowledged with a degree of self awareness. But it's not, instead it's wrapped up in so many layers of convoluted logic that most people, insiders and outsiders both, can't see the real reason for this obsession.

rhn_mk1 4y ago
You might want to get familiar with what effective altruism actually focuses on. https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism#what-are-some-examples-of-effective-altruism-in-practice https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-e... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JmmA2Mf5GrY9D6nQD/four-focus-areas-of-effective-altruism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JmmA2Mf5GrY9D6nQD/four-focus... https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/best-charities-to-donate-to-2023#donate-to-expertmanaged-funds https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/best-charities-to-donate-to-...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
mitthrowaway2 4y ago
I think they're worried about it because they honestly do care about existential risk. If you can come up with some more likely existential threats than AI, I'm sure they'll worry about that too.
yanderekko 4y ago
>The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety. That's really not true. There's a huge overlap in these groups, but the top EA charities are not shoveling all their money at AI alignment orgs... even if one can argue that they should.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  Arguing that AI safety is needed only demonstrates that it's altruistic, but you have a lot farther to go if you want to say funding research in this decade can be effective.
Natsu 4y ago
> The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety. How many EA people do you know? That seems to get the most clicks, but I usually associate them with things like mosquito bed nets to help prevent malaria, because that's a far more common topic in my experience. I'm sure you can find particular people who are all about the AI risk stuff that seems pretty wild to me, too. But when you say "focused exclusively" I feel like you may have mostly seen news articles about wild AI stuff and not the average EA enthusiast who spends their time talking about picking efficient charities.
- aetherson 4y ago
  As someone who is not an EA, but has been peripherally aware of them for years, the bed nets stuff was their big thing until maybe three years ago, but it genuinely is the case that a lot of their energy had recently redirected to AI safety and other X-risks. That isn't to say that the malaria stuff isn't still a big topic, but there has been a shift.
  - HDThoreaun 4y ago
    Givewell is still where most EA money flows and they are almost exclusively focused on mosquito nets and other malaria intervention.
  - bakuninsbart 4y ago
    Yep, I think the community is pretty evenly split amongst "longtermist"-focused people, and this includes all the X-Risk stuff, as well as the more classical "Global Health & Happiness" people. At this point they are actually relatively distinct groups I'd wager. One thing missing from the article is that, at least in my experience, the vast majority of the opportunists are in the longtermist camp. Longtermist topics are the perfect combination of high-prestige and smart sounding with a complete lack of accountability, because the impact of research or projects won't materialize for decades. Ironically, in practice it directly contradicts the founding tenants of EA, despite being a logical conclusion of the underlying moral philosophy.
arisAlexis 4y ago
they do. One of the most famous EA books is the precipice and it talks about all existential risks. Also most of the funding gets dispersed.
consilient 4y ago
> The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety, at least in what they publish online. Just looking at the topics section of the EA forums (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/all https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/all), we've got - 466 posts in AI safety - 1060 posts in existential risk (seems like a roughly even mix of pandemics, nuclear war, and AI) - 816 posts in global health - 193 posts in animal welfare - 42 posts in biosecurity & pandemics
- pksebben 4y ago
  didn't really have much of a dog in this fight, but looking at that breakdown I wonder which oil company is bankrolling them. I know I'm jumping the gun just a little, but c'mon. An apocalypse list without climate?
  - dotsam 4y ago
    Climate change is unlikely to kill everyone on earth. Other risks, such as an engineered pandemic, asteroid impact, or an AI apocalypse have the possibility of killing ~everyone. This is not saying that climate change is not a real issue.
    - pksebben 4y ago
      Well, we're past the asteroids, at least. [1] The AIpocalypse seems incredibly unlikely. I'm a lot more worried about the nukes, and even if we end up with robotic overlords, I'd bet they'll be a whole lot better at administration than meat -admins have proven. I'm with you on engineered superviruses. Feasible, likely, and incredibly high impact. What I kind of keep coming back to is the risk profile of all this stuff. That magic vector of likelihood * impact. Global warming is happening now. And it's real bad - worse than I think we give it credit for. What I worry about is that we're the proverbial frog in the pot. Things get just slightly hotter each year, so we'll miss it when we actually boil. 1 https://www.google.com/search?q=double+asteroid+redirection+test https://www.google.com/search?q=double+asteroid+redirection+...
    - 4y ago
naasking 4y ago
> They don't. They hardly talk about anything else except AI. Even if that were true, there are lots of people already looking at those other existential risks. The EA crowd was the only group concerned about AI for a long, long time. Seeing an existential risk that nobody else does leads to evangelism and hyper focus so people start paying attention.
low_tech_love 4y ago
AI safety and "longtermism" (I feel slightly more stupid just by writing this) is an escape route for the group's realization that (a) they cannot really make a difference and (b) even if they could, it would require a lot of actual work. The person who goes out in the middle of a cold night and cooks soup for homeless people can quite easily count how many mouths he fed; sounds quite effective and quantitative to me. Or maybe the volunteer who is helping fight malaria in a desert somewhere outside of America/Europe; actually, they don't need to count, their exhaustion at the end of a hard day is proof enough of their altruism. But since the real goals of the EAs are not to do any of that (it's just a bunch of socially-awkward geeks looking to feel accepted in some kind of community and find sexual partners; in other words, trying to feel like normal humans), they fooled themselves into believing that such short term actions are "ineffective"; actually, any actual measurable hard work has to necessarily be ineffective, or else it would actually have to be done. So they keep pushing their agenda to longer and longer term issues, more abstract and less well-defined as possible, which cannot be actually measured, so they can continue to build this weird, meaningless, ridiculous fantasy that they live in (and which supports their social hierarchy) without having to actually do anything concrete.

rhn_mk1 4y ago

You might want to get familiar with what effective altruism actually focuses on. https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-effective-altruism#what-are-some-examples-of-effective-altruism-in-practice https://www.effectivealtruism.org/articles/introduction-to-e... https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JmmA2Mf5GrY9D6nQD/four-focus-areas-of-effective-altruism https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/JmmA2Mf5GrY9D6nQD/four-focus... https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/best-charities-to-donate-to-2023#donate-to-expertmanaged-funds https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/best-charities-to-donate-to-...

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

mitthrowaway2 4y ago

I think they're worried about it because they honestly do care about existential risk. If you can come up with some more likely existential threats than AI, I'm sure they'll worry about that too.

yanderekko 4y ago

>The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety. That's really not true. There's a huge overlap in these groups, but the top EA charities are not shoveling all their money at AI alignment orgs... even if one can argue that they should.

whatshisface 4y ago
Arguing that AI safety is needed only demonstrates that it's altruistic, but you have a lot farther to go if you want to say funding research in this decade can be effective.

Natsu 4y ago

> The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety. How many EA people do you know? That seems to get the most clicks, but I usually associate them with things like mosquito bed nets to help prevent malaria, because that's a far more common topic in my experience. I'm sure you can find particular people who are all about the AI risk stuff that seems pretty wild to me, too. But when you say "focused exclusively" I feel like you may have mostly seen news articles about wild AI stuff and not the average EA enthusiast who spends their time talking about picking efficient charities.

aetherson 4y ago
As someone who is not an EA, but has been peripherally aware of them for years, the bed nets stuff was their big thing until maybe three years ago, but it genuinely is the case that a lot of their energy had recently redirected to AI safety and other X-risks. That isn't to say that the malaria stuff isn't still a big topic, but there has been a shift.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  Givewell is still where most EA money flows and they are almost exclusively focused on mosquito nets and other malaria intervention.
- bakuninsbart 4y ago
  Yep, I think the community is pretty evenly split amongst "longtermist"-focused people, and this includes all the X-Risk stuff, as well as the more classical "Global Health & Happiness" people. At this point they are actually relatively distinct groups I'd wager. One thing missing from the article is that, at least in my experience, the vast majority of the opportunists are in the longtermist camp. Longtermist topics are the perfect combination of high-prestige and smart sounding with a complete lack of accountability, because the impact of research or projects won't materialize for decades. Ironically, in practice it directly contradicts the founding tenants of EA, despite being a logical conclusion of the underlying moral philosophy.

arisAlexis 4y ago

they do. One of the most famous EA books is the precipice and it talks about all existential risks. Also most of the funding gets dispersed.

consilient 4y ago

> The issue is that the effective altruism crowd are focused exclusively on AI safety, at least in what they publish online. Just looking at the topics section of the EA forums (https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/all https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/topics/all), we've got - 466 posts in AI safety - 1060 posts in existential risk (seems like a roughly even mix of pandemics, nuclear war, and AI) - 816 posts in global health - 193 posts in animal welfare - 42 posts in biosecurity & pandemics

pksebben 4y ago
didn't really have much of a dog in this fight, but looking at that breakdown I wonder which oil company is bankrolling them. I know I'm jumping the gun just a little, but c'mon. An apocalypse list without climate?
- dotsam 4y ago
  Climate change is unlikely to kill everyone on earth. Other risks, such as an engineered pandemic, asteroid impact, or an AI apocalypse have the possibility of killing ~everyone. This is not saying that climate change is not a real issue.
  - pksebben 4y ago
    Well, we're past the asteroids, at least. [1] The AIpocalypse seems incredibly unlikely. I'm a lot more worried about the nukes, and even if we end up with robotic overlords, I'd bet they'll be a whole lot better at administration than meat -admins have proven. I'm with you on engineered superviruses. Feasible, likely, and incredibly high impact. What I kind of keep coming back to is the risk profile of all this stuff. That magic vector of likelihood * impact. Global warming is happening now. And it's real bad - worse than I think we give it credit for. What I worry about is that we're the proverbial frog in the pot. Things get just slightly hotter each year, so we'll miss it when we actually boil. 1 https://www.google.com/search?q=double+asteroid+redirection+test https://www.google.com/search?q=double+asteroid+redirection+...
  - 4y ago

naasking 4y ago

> They don't. They hardly talk about anything else except AI. Even if that were true, there are lots of people already looking at those other existential risks. The EA crowd was the only group concerned about AI for a long, long time. Seeing an existential risk that nobody else does leads to evangelism and hyper focus so people start paying attention.

low_tech_love 4y ago

AI safety and "longtermism" (I feel slightly more stupid just by writing this) is an escape route for the group's realization that (a) they cannot really make a difference and (b) even if they could, it would require a lot of actual work. The person who goes out in the middle of a cold night and cooks soup for homeless people can quite easily count how many mouths he fed; sounds quite effective and quantitative to me. Or maybe the volunteer who is helping fight malaria in a desert somewhere outside of America/Europe; actually, they don't need to count, their exhaustion at the end of a hard day is proof enough of their altruism. But since the real goals of the EAs are not to do any of that (it's just a bunch of socially-awkward geeks looking to feel accepted in some kind of community and find sexual partners; in other words, trying to feel like normal humans), they fooled themselves into believing that such short term actions are "ineffective"; actually, any actual measurable hard work has to necessarily be ineffective, or else it would actually have to be done. So they keep pushing their agenda to longer and longer term issues, more abstract and less well-defined as possible, which cannot be actually measured, so they can continue to build this weird, meaningless, ridiculous fantasy that they live in (and which supports their social hierarchy) without having to actually do anything concrete.