Cool news: Jesse Eisenberg donated a kidney to a stranger, and said it was after hearing a podcast on 'effective altruism' where they talked about kidney donations. He mentioned it in this podcast. I assume this might lead back to Dylan Matthews.
Has anyone talked about the role the Green Revolution probably played in making factory farming economically viable?
Among other enabling factors (e.g. antibiotics), factory farming, especially of pigs and poultry, depends on cheap grain feed. The system only works at scale if feed costs are low enough to make confinement viable relative to pasture. The Green Revolution roughly tripled global grain production between 1960 and 2000, and maize in particular became cheap enough to feed to animals at industrial volumes.
Every time I see a celebration of Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution, I can't help but recoil a little, thinking about the unintended consequence on the tens of billions of non-human animals impacted.
If this is true, I feel conflicted in how to think about the Green Revolution. Clearly good intentions, saved hundreds of millions of humna, condemned hundreds of billions to lives of animals to pain. I feel like the EA community has the right virtues to hold this complexity.
Which comes back to the question: how should we talk about the Green Revolution?
I understand the concern, but I don't think we gain much from vilifying scientific discovery because of what humans do with it down the line, especially a second order effect like this. I don't think it's super complex. Was it bad to discover nuclear fission because the USA bombed Hiroshima?
I think important discoveries well intended should be praised, and it's a separate discussion why it was then used for ill.
How organisations with low AI usage can and should be using it more
There is a lot of discussion about how everyone should be using AI more, and efforts to increase use and literacy. So far in animal advocacy spaces where I work I’ve seen the following efforts to increase usage so far:
The above has made a real dent in AI usage, but much less than we should be aiming for given the gains left on the table. My sense is that the reason these actions have only seen incremental improvements is that:
I think the following would meaningfully improve how much individuals and organisations use AI:
What do people think? What have I missed?
Have you considered that the reason these policies are not increasing AI usage is that AI usage is not particularly useful for many applications? Particularly when it comes to something like animal advocacy, I'm struggling to think of many things you'd actually need a full model subscription for (rather than just asking the occasional question to a free model).
I think the original policies are fine: they let people evaluate and decide for themselves how useful AI models are, and adjust strategies accordingly. Trying to pressure people to use AI beyond this level is going to make your team less effective.
Yeah I have, and my impression from those I've spoken with is that this has not been the case. You don't think most people whose job primarily involves sitting at a computer could have much of their job automated by a software engineer on call? For example:
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?
Personally I love long oats the same. I think 9/10 times I can sniff LLM written stuff a mile off then I don't read it. I also appreciate that the forum flags it for me to
I don't think an LLM can yet sound not like an LLM
100% agree, and for the same reasons.
bullets -> LLM -> Essay -> LLM -> bullets
As someone who has just started engaging more, I find the culture of EA seems to be about demonstrating thoughtfulness, but at times the verbosity is cumbersome. Not sure if it's because it's largely grounded in academia/university? In industry, nobody communicates via 3000 word essays unless they are being sued.