BLUF:
* To determine whether AI is ‘improving exponentially’, ‘hitting the wall’, or any other claim which involves a quantity or magnitude (e.g. ‘This model was a big leap/small increment’). We need a good y-axis: an interval scale of AI capability which means +1 unit always represents the same degree of ‘how much better’, in the same way +1 degree Celsius is always the same amount of ‘how much hotter’.
* Yet there is no good y-axis for AI capability. All our...
Public service announcement
1. Applications are now open for our first ever round of the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program dedicated exclusively to animal welfare. Learn more about what’s different this round here and apply...
Summary
* The animal welfare movement has already seen an influx in funding and should prepare for the possibility of more.
* The EA Animal Welfare Fund is encouraging those working in animal advocacy to actively set aside time and resources now to concretely plan for scaling sustainably, and we’ll support you in doing that.
* We’re requesting advocates set concrete ambitious goals and submit plans t...
At the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya did a lot to reduce animal experimentation and thus reduce animal suffering. As far as ChatGPT can tell, this seems to be completely ignored by the Effective Altruism forum.
Marty Makary's FDA is also taking it's steps to reduce the need of animal testing for FDA approvals.
Is this simply, because Effective Altruists don't like the Trump administration so they can't take the win of MAHA bringing contrarians into control of health policy that do things like caring more about reducing animal suffering and fighting the replication crisis?
I don't think so.
Some less tribalistic hypotheses I can think of:
But tribalistic explanations could be a factor too (e.g. MAHA has anti-science vibes, and EAs like to stay on the pro-science side).
(This is probably not the most constructive feedback, but my initial reaction to this short form was that it felt like a right-wing analog of left-wing "Why don't the EAs tweet about Gaza?"-style criticisms).