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Selected posts to help us answer: How can we do the most good with our resources?

Curated

Beware Silver Bullets: Are we making “welfare tech” into the next animal advocacy bubble?

Rockwell, Tom Billington·3w ago·9m read

4 historical big goal projects - and what we can learn from them

Andrew Youn·14h ago·5m read

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: One Year Closer

So8res·1d ago·9m read

55% of the US public is now aware of AI xrisk

Otto·1d ago·2m read

How should the Anthropic IPO impact my donations?

Jens Aslaug 🔸·2d ago·1m read

Popular comments and quick takes

EA Should Invest in Animal Liberation and Diet Change Advocacy

View in thread

LewisBollard

107

Thanks for the post. I think this is an important strategic debate to have, so I'll reply in more length than usual.

I agree with you that we should be honest about what we believe, pursue a variety of strategies, and try to expand the moral circle. I also think you're right that animal liberation played an important role in recruiting many of the movement's current leaders. And I have immense respect for liberation-focused activists like Wayne Hsiung who do courageous work to help animals. None of the following is intended as a criticism of their work. That said, I disagree with you on a number of other points:

EA didn't just ignore diet change -- it deprioritized it based on evidence it wasn't working. You write that in EA, "there appears to be scant (and in many cases zero) room for diet change advocacy." But the EA Forum has a whole section on diet change with 198 posts. It includes numerous posts by EAs going deep into the evidence on dietary change -- and finding little evidence of impact. A post arguing for more resources to go to dietary change should at least engage with the evidence that suggests it doesn't work.
We've tried many versions of diet change. You write, "A failed attempt does not test an idea for all time. It tests one version of that idea..." But we've tested many versions of the idea! EAs have tested -- and funded the testing of -- leafletting, online ads, documentaries, institutional meat reduction, pledges, and just about every dietary change idea produced. Other funders have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into diet change with limited effects. We should keep testing new approaches to diet change. But, until we find one that works, I don't think we should invest dramatically more in an approach that has repeatedly failed.
It's not clear to me why AI and more resources will change the relative cost-effectiveness of dietary change vs. other strategies. You write, "Animal liberation and diet change advocacy have never operated at the scale that may soon be possible with 1) AI and 2) dramatically more resources." This is true. It's also true of all other interventions. What matters is not whether AI or vastly more resources could increase animal liberation / diet change's impact -- I'm sure they could -- but whether they will make those interventions relatively more impactful than the other interventions we could deploy AI and those resources toward. Again, the post doesn't explain why they would.
I'm skeptical that animal liberation activism made farm animal welfare improvements possible. You suggest that "It seems to me quite possible that advocacy on behalf of animal liberation is what shifted the Overton Window with regard to farm animal welfare." But you don't point to evidence for that claim, so consider some evidence to the contrary. All federal US farm animal welfare improvements (the 28 Hour Law, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act) preceded any liberation activism, as did critical UK, Swiss, Scandinavian, German, and EU reforms. All the recent corporate animal welfare wins came after the movement pivoted away from vegan outreach (2015 onward) and toward focusing on welfare wins. Animal liberation activists largely opposed these campaigns. It's not clear to me how liberationist activists chanting that cage-free is evil encouraged corporations to go cage-free.
The justice movement analogy points to the challenge with dietary change. You ask "Are there other justice movements that ignored the fact that they were justice movements?" To which I reply: "Are there other justice movements that succeeded through individual behavioral change as dietary change seeks to?" I can't think of any. (Also, as Elliot notes in the comments, there are lots of social movements that have succeeded without the liberation / justice frame.)
I think the talent section presents a false choice. You write, "If we don’t tell the world why animals matter ... will we attract people with the passion and focus on maximum impact that comes with knowing you’re in a liberation struggle?" But EAs are constantly telling the world why animals matter, and constantly attracting people who are passionate and focused on maximum impact. I think EA in general is a rebuttal to the idea that you can only attract passionate and impactful people to doing good by framing things as a liberation struggle. AI safety doesn't, global health doesn't, and it's not clear why animals should be the exception.
This is a good case for some funding of animal liberation / diet change, but not a good case for spending more at the current margin. If you include PETA's $80M annual budget, and the ~$50M annually spent on diet change globally, animal liberation and diet change currently account for over a third of the animal movement's funding. So the question is not "should animal liberation and diet change get any funding," but rather "at the margin, will increasing animal liberation / diet change advocacy from ~$130M to $X do more to help animals than the alternatives?" I think we should keep assessing that on the merits of each opportunity.

Thanks again for this thoughtful post, which I think makes an important point.

Maxwell Love's Quick Takes

Some quick observations on the attacks on METR, EA, and other AI safety orgs (from my perspective as a political campaigner and former Communications Director for a union and mayor during COVID):

If you're explaining, you're losing: Every rebuttal repeats the accusation to people who haven't heard it yet. Answer the accusation once, link to it, and stop explaining. This is the "illusory truth" effect (information is true when it's repeated).
Silence doesn't work either: Not responding on the record suggests something is being hidden. Make one clear statement rather than amplifying in multiple twitter threads.
Concede what you can: A concept I know from political comms is the "admission against interest". This buys trust, disarms cynical voters, and establishes credibility. Saying "yes, AND here's what we're doing about it" will take some air out of the critique.
Messenger > message: Ideally people who know the organization being attacked, are from outside the AI safety world, have independent standing, or better yet, have disagreed with the organization publicly will land the defense better.
Going after people's personal lives or spouses is overreach: Ordinary people will obviously find this unfair and it's where their attacks will backfire.
Don't quote tweet and rebut: You're just distributing their message for them.

I want to write something longer on this but don't have time right now. Lots of opportunity for good crisis comms here. Let me know what's wrong about this take and if you'd like to hear more!

ElliotTep's Quick takes

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ElliotTep

I notice I now value shorter posts and comments much more than I used to.

It used to be sometimes a long post was a sign the person was rambling, and sometimes just meant the had a lot to say, or didn't have the time to make it more concise, but it was still a valuable contribution. Now with LLM's being so verbose, I find my eyes glazing over longer writing. Even when it doesn't 'sound' like an LLM, it isn't that hard to get AI to not sound like AI if it has a writing sample.

What do others think?

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: One Year Closer

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RobBensinger

15h

We floated this idea with the publisher, but IABIED sales have been continuously very strong for the entire past year, which is quite unusual and made them not want to pursue a second edition yet.

One issue is printer-side: a second edition would apparently involve long delays and fewer books moved.

Maxime Fournes's Quick takes

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Maxime Fournes

Crunch Time is Now. Drop Everything.

Epistemic status: Hopeful, stressed, terrified, ecstatic.

tl;dr This could be it. For the next few days, do nothing but contact journalists and policymakers (ideally via existing orgs), attend/share/organise protests near you, and use your public profile to speak out.

This is Our Chance

The explosion of interest in AI safety over the last week has been both inspiring and dizzyingly fast. We might actually win this thing.

Events since the Jacob Coxon resignation have blown the Overton window as wide open as it is likely to get. This is the kind of chance we have dreamed of, and we have a responsibility not to waste it. We may not get another.

What You Can Do

This window will not last forever. We need to act over a matter of days, not weeks or months.

This is the time to call in favours, work overtime, and put all your strength of heart and brain into keeping our world safe.

If you work in AI safety, we think the most impactful thing for you to do is to drop everything you are doing and pour your energy into policy and media outreach.

Politicians and journalists want to be able to speak on this issue but are keenly aware of their lack of technical knowledge. Cold-emailing and cold-calling them and offering to brief them has a surprisingly high likelihood of success.

This especially includes conservative ones. We don’t care what your personal politics are, survival is a non-partisan issue.

There are many ways in which people of all skillsets and levels of experience can contribute, but we suggest three key actions:

Contact journalists and members of congress/parliament, This is best done by volunteering for an existing organisation. We are capacity constrained and need your help. You do not need to be an expert: there are plenty of jobs that need doing.
- PauseAI Global
- People for a Pause
- ControlAI
- Humans in Control
- Humans First
- Evitable
- Any other group you have a line into
Share and attend protests in your area and invite your friends and family. For instance:
- This PauseAI protest in London
- This People for a Pause protest in DC
- Occupy OpenAI (in San Francisco and New York)
- This PauseAI protest in Berlin
Speak out: Twitter, Instagram, wherever. Be grounded in facts, but also convey the right mood. Also, we’re in the Overton window - speak accordingly.

We need to put out clear, actionable asks for policymakers to translate this momentum into real solutions. We suggest:

US - The people really want Donald Trump to negotiate a pause treaty with Xi Jinping and he might get a Nobel Peace Prize if he makes the deal. National security depends on it.
UK - Andy Burnham needs to announce that the UK will convene a pause treaty summit and thereby protect its citizens and honour its legacy of global influence and world-leading safety talent (e.g. Bletchley Park Summit, UK AISI).
Elsewhere - Every government can act within their own borders and put pressure on the US government to get on board. We cannot let unaccountable US tech giants put us all at risk.

Good Luck and Godspeed

For the first time in a very long time, we actually think things might go well for humanity. Whether that happens is up to us.

See you on the other side.

JordanStone's Quick takes

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JordanStone

4d*

Chase Hamilton and I are spinning a longtermist space governance organization out of Forethought, and we're looking for people to join us.

We'll be doing field-building to influence and mature the existing field of space policy to more effectively address longtermist issues, and technical and policy research on orbital data centres, military activity beyond Earth orbit, AI integration of space surveillance data, and other work at the intersection of transformative AI, the industrial explosion, extreme power concentration, viatopia, and the long-term future. Happy to share internal docs on this stuff, please DM me.

If you might be a good fit to help set up an org, want to do research on space governance, or just have strong opinions we should hear, we'd love to chat: [book a meeting with us here]. Or feel free to email me at [email protected] with any questions or introductions.

55% of the US public is now aware of AI xrisk

Otto·1d ago·2m read

How should the Anthropic IPO impact my donations?

Jens Aslaug 🔸·2d ago·1m read

The AI-Bio risk debate is skipping too many steps

Daniel Irowa-Omoregie·2d ago·8m read

Announcing Theory of Change Builder: an AI-assisted tool for interactive flowcharts

Zoé Roy-Stang, Moïri Gamboni·2d ago·4m read

Community

It’s time to vote

Michelle_Hutchinson·2d ago·2m read

Community

Principles-first fieldbuilding ideas (BC #18)

gergo·2d ago·5m read

AI ∩ Cybersecurity News 26.37

Flo 🔸·2d ago·4m read

How we might actually pace the frontier: A proposal for AI companies to do public pacing exercises.

Dewi·3d ago·4m read

Selected posts to help us answer: How can we do the most good with our resources?

Popular comments and quick takes

EA Should Invest in Animal Liberation and Diet Change Advocacy

View in thread

LewisBollard

107

Thanks for the post. I think this is an important strategic debate to have, so I'll reply in more length than usual.

EA didn't just ignore diet change -- it deprioritized it based on evidence it wasn't working. You write that in EA, "there appears to be scant (and in many cases zero) room for diet change advocacy." But the EA Forum has a whole section on diet change with 198 posts. It includes numerous posts by EAs going deep into the evidence on dietary change -- and finding little evidence of impact. A post arguing for more resources to go to dietary change should at least engage with the evidence that suggests it doesn't work.
We've tried many versions of diet change. You write, "A failed attempt does not test an idea for all time. It tests one version of that idea..." But we've tested many versions of the idea! EAs have tested -- and funded the testing of -- leafletting, online ads, documentaries, institutional meat reduction, pledges, and just about every dietary change idea produced. Other funders have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into diet change with limited effects. We should keep testing new approaches to diet change. But, until we find one that works, I don't think we should invest dramatically more in an approach that has repeatedly failed.
It's not clear to me why AI and more resources will change the relative cost-effectiveness of dietary change vs. other strategies. You write, "Animal liberation and diet change advocacy have never operated at the scale that may soon be possible with 1) AI and 2) dramatically more resources." This is true. It's also true of all other interventions. What matters is not whether AI or vastly more resources could increase animal liberation / diet change's impact -- I'm sure they could -- but whether they will make those interventions relatively more impactful than the other interventions we could deploy AI and those resources toward. Again, the post doesn't explain why they would.
I'm skeptical that animal liberation activism made farm animal welfare improvements possible. You suggest that "It seems to me quite possible that advocacy on behalf of animal liberation is what shifted the Overton Window with regard to farm animal welfare." But you don't point to evidence for that claim, so consider some evidence to the contrary. All federal US farm animal welfare improvements (the 28 Hour Law, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act) preceded any liberation activism, as did critical UK, Swiss, Scandinavian, German, and EU reforms. All the recent corporate animal welfare wins came after the movement pivoted away from vegan outreach (2015 onward) and toward focusing on welfare wins. Animal liberation activists largely opposed these campaigns. It's not clear to me how liberationist activists chanting that cage-free is evil encouraged corporations to go cage-free.
The justice movement analogy points to the challenge with dietary change. You ask "Are there other justice movements that ignored the fact that they were justice movements?" To which I reply: "Are there other justice movements that succeeded through individual behavioral change as dietary change seeks to?" I can't think of any. (Also, as Elliot notes in the comments, there are lots of social movements that have succeeded without the liberation / justice frame.)
I think the talent section presents a false choice. You write, "If we don’t tell the world why animals matter ... will we attract people with the passion and focus on maximum impact that comes with knowing you’re in a liberation struggle?" But EAs are constantly telling the world why animals matter, and constantly attracting people who are passionate and focused on maximum impact. I think EA in general is a rebuttal to the idea that you can only attract passionate and impactful people to doing good by framing things as a liberation struggle. AI safety doesn't, global health doesn't, and it's not clear why animals should be the exception.
This is a good case for some funding of animal liberation / diet change, but not a good case for spending more at the current margin. If you include PETA's $80M annual budget, and the ~$50M annually spent on diet change globally, animal liberation and diet change currently account for over a third of the animal movement's funding. So the question is not "should animal liberation and diet change get any funding," but rather "at the margin, will increasing animal liberation / diet change advocacy from ~$130M to $X do more to help animals than the alternatives?" I think we should keep assessing that on the merits of each opportunity.

Thanks again for this thoughtful post, which I think makes an important point.