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...
TL;DR
* The Long-Term Future Fund is closing down, and EA Funds is launching the Transformative AI Fund with a new full-time team.
* The fund's primary focus is technical AI safety and AI governance (including post-AGI governance), as well as supporting fields such as field-building and forecasting. We'll also consider non-GCR implications of transformative AI such as flourishing futures and digital...
No we should not limit development of poor countries because we're worried about them building up their factory farm industries.
There's a lot of moral uncertainty when comparing animal and human welfare, so that utility calculus will almost always be a dead end. Meanwhile what we can be quite certain of is that limiting global development will be really harmful to the people in those developing countries. It would also look very hypocritical for rich countries to turn around and tell poor countries they shouldn't develop because of animal rights and therefore damaging to the relationship between developing countries and development economists.
It's a no from me.