Comments
...
Curated and popular this week
With the AI windfall, mental health may be taken increasingly seriously by mainstream EA. There’s increasingly room to explore the cause area and answer some of the biggest uncertainties; at the same time, costs of the most effective interventions are continuing to fall. StrongMinds is now treating for ~$35, about a third of GiveWell’s best guess from a few years ago, and is expected to...
Summary: The actions taken this decade may be exceptionally important for the future of civilization, but we should be unusually hesitant to proclaim that any course of action is “best.” Still, we should try to think carefully about how we'll influence the future.
This post was written as part of an introduction to a new reading group I’m starting called “Doing Good in the Age of AGI.” If you want to follow along, the full curriculum can be found ...
Recent opportunities to take action
When people realize they're in collective danger, they get really upset. If there is no body organizing that feeling into a movement, it happens chaotically. When it happens chaotically, it can go really wrong.
Organizing a movement requires short, relatable material to be seen by huge numbers of people in a short time. It needs a big campaign that gets people on their feet through hand-outs, lawn-signs, info booths, stunts, t-shirts, stickers. It has to provide a body of volunteers with support and logistics. Doing it right in a short time takes a lot of funding. Without that it fails to gel, or it goes sideways.
If something happens and the revolt over AI is spontaneous, that is probably going to get ugly. There is a high chance a knee-jerk reaction not backed by a carefully prepared organizing body will target the wrong goal. It could cause us to miss a key opportunity to reign in research before it's too late.
On the other hand, a well informed, clear-eyed, persistent campaign that grows organically from the right roots? That is really the best chance we have to create so much social pressure not to pursue AI that the race stops and sanity returns.
EA should back and help organize this work. It's the obvious choice, with all the right connections and several well structured communities already formed.