>I made a 13x13" hole in my wall
I was away for the day and when I got home, he said "I made a hole in our wall but it can be refilled."
This comment section felt a bit brigaded here, which I don't love.
I'm sympathetic to debating strategic disagreements in the animal welfare movement, and appreciate you bringing these ideas up and pushing for what you believe is the right approach.
There were 2 things that stood out to me:
We need to go beyond Peter Singer’s utilitarian approach, which has had a limiting impact on campaigns giving preference to concerns about animal suffering and welfare reforms. What is needed are a deontological philosophy and a holistic, ecological systems approach.
I don't think utilitarianism gives a preference to welfare reforms — it's that welfare reforms have a strong track record of being effective, while these other approaches don't. Peter Singer himself wholeheartedly embraces animal liberation, literally! If the utilitarians thought that things beyond welfare reforms would work, and were cost-effective, they'd do them. It isn't because of their principled commitment to utilitarianism that they disagree.
Secondly, I think that many of the donors and EAs would stop being EA donors or EAs at all if deontology became the norm. At least speaking for myself, I am not aligned with EA because it is EA, but I'm aligned with EA because it is more aligned with my values (which are very utilitarian). I suspect this is true for many EA-motivated people. If EA changes, it doesn't mean the donors will change their values.
The campaign was inspired by: (1) the “AI Windfall” entering the animal movement
I think an important question for people who aren't excited about new funding entering the space going to welfare reforms is "why are these new donors are interested in funding animal welfare work at all?"
I think the answer is because cage-free campaigns, etc. demonstrated that helping animals at scale was possible, and because welfare-motivated advocates demonstrated that something could be done to help animals effectively.
No animal welfare advocate controls where these donors give — if the movement today decided to pivot to plant-based advocacy and stop doing welfare stuff, it's plausible significantly less money would be donated to helping animals. There isn't a pot of unlimited money controlled by animal advocates — there are donors who have specific values and priorities, and organizations who will make the case to those donors that their work should be funded. The pitch should be to the donors (who actually will decide these things), not to EA as a whole, and has to overcome the fact that you're pitching against the thing that might have gotten many of them excited about animal advocacy in the first place.
Why am I not bullish on civilizational refuges for reducing bio xrisk? I believe bio xrisk is concentrated in E2H scenarios or AI takeover, and neither of these things benefit much from refuges. For both of these threat models, there is value in refuges but only if they are a safe staging area to take back control of the environment or against an AI, which means you probably need a full industrial base worth of people/infrastructure to be protected. Society-wide biohardening and PPE is therefore the better option even on purely longtermist grounds (and has the additional property of also being much more valuable on non-longtermist grounds as well!)
Wanted to share a quick update on my comments on AI safety comms from a couple weeks ago. The NY Post is now reporting that the FTC is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and METR, with formal demands (similar to subpoenas) reportedly coming in the next few weeks.
I think Brian Martin's Backfire framework could be useful in responding here. Martin found that power holders use five methods to suppress outrage, and there's something we can do in response to make it backfire:
I've worked on a few similar cases in the past two years, mostly in the pro-democracy space, including the FBI's arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan. We built a coalition beyond the usual suspects and brought her case to the public with polling that showed a clear message to the general public. We hosted a vigil before her trial and a "Court of Public Opinion" outside the courthouse each time she appeared before a judge.
Making this backfire will be easier to do now, before the attack lands. Crisis comms is 95% preparation and relationships, 5% the crisis itself.
Would love to talk with more people about this!
*AI use: I used AI to tighten up the backfire bullets and intend to lengthen this piece into a longer one.
Tentative thesis: China is unlikely to accept a subordinate position in AI capabilities to the US, just as the US is unlikely to accept a subordinate position in AI capabilities to China or anyone else.
This thesis suggests that there are two likely paths for the future international AI (non)regulation:
1) a continuing race between the US and China, perhaps joined by some late entrants, possibly with some rules established (e.g. mutual ban on autonomous weapons or something like that), or
2) a “pause or stop deal” that will establish some sort of ceiling on capabilities, which will be equal for China and the US.
What I think is far less likely is a deal in which China would accept lower AI capabilities than the US.
I simply don’t see a good reason why Chinese leaders would accept subordinate position. They know that China has the ability to catch-up to the US in various technological domains, as evidenced by the fact that in, like, 1990, China was behind in more or less everything, and now they are pushing the technological frontier in many areas.
Some estimates floating around the web suggest that, if the US would stop AI development now, China could reach current US capabilities within months. That is maybe overly optimistic/pessimistic depending on where you stand, but I very much doubt that catch-up would take more than a decade. And Chinese government, being patriotic about the abilities of the Chinese nation, probably will not have an absurdly pessimistic estimate.
Moreover, the Chinese regime is in many ways oriented around this idea of catching up (this is a big difference between China and EU). It is a central plank of the official historical narrative of the People’s Republic of China (see for example preamble to their constitution: https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/lawsregulations/201911/20/content_WS5ed8856ec6d0b3f0e9499913.html) that the century between First Opium War and the Communist victory in the Chinese civil war in 1949 was the century of humiliation, during which various imperialist powers exploited China due to the fact that it was technologically backward country unable to stand up to them. I happen to think this narrative is largely correct, but even if it isn’t, what matters is that Chinese government believes it and is determined to never again allow China to be put in the position where a technologically superior power could walk over it.
This has some implications:
A) Since China is currently behind, any sort of “pause or stop deal” between the US and China would likely have to involve either the US stopping further development and allowing China to catch up, or the US somehow crippling its own capabilities to a current Chinese level. Of course, for either option, the US would have to place a lot of trust in the Chinese government.
B) As long as China is behind, export controls on hardware and other attempts to limit Chinese capabilities are at best of doubtful utility as a way to get to a "pause or stop" agreement. In fact, imho there are making a deal less likely. They antagonize Chinese leaders, make them even more paranoid and less inclined to a constructive agreement. But also, to the extent they are successful in limiting Chinese capabilities, they make it less likely to that the US government would agree to an equal deal, since that would mean sacrificing larger lead, which is harder to politically accept for the US. Perhaps this is a reason why nuclear arms treaties in the Cold war were agreed only after the USSR more or less caught up to US nuclear arsenal?
Now, attempts to limit Chinese capabilities can still be seen as useful if you think it is important for the US to “win” the competition, for example because there are reasons to believe US AI will be safer. Or because you think the world would be a better place if the US “wins”, even though both countries would develop similarly dangerous systems. Or of course if you think that the US victory would be preferable even if American AI would be more dangerous than Chinese AI.
Btw. for a well written snapshot of Chinese opinion/vibes, I recommend this: https://www.chinatalk.media/p/how-anthropic-became-chinas-goliath
With all the recent media attention on EA, I think what's really unclear to outsiders is the relationship between EA and Anthropic (rightfully so!). To most people it doesn't make sense that a community so focused on AI safety can also be linked to one of the leading companies. I'd personally be very interested to see a survey of what EAs think of Anthropic, but maybe that's a minefield.. Even a good explainer meant for the public could go a long way.