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Curated and popular this week
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The cause prioritization landscape in EA is changing. Prominent groups have shut down, others have been founded, and everyone’s trying to figure out how to prepare for AI. This is the third in a series of posts critically examining the state of cause prioritization and strategies for moving forward.
Executive Summary
* An increasingly common argument is that we should prioritize work in AI over work in other cause areas (e.g. farmed animal welfare, reducing nuclear risks) because the impending AI revolution undermines the value of working in those other areas.
* We consider three versions of the argument:
* Aligned superintelligent AI will solve many of the problems that we currently face in other cause areas.
* Misaligned AI will be so disastrous that none of the existing problems will matter because we’ll all be dead or worse.
* AI will be so disruptive that our current theories of change will all be obsolete, so the best thing to do is wait, build resources, and reformulate plans until after the AI revolution.
* We identify some key cruxes of these arguments, and present reasons to be skeptical of them. A more direct case needs to be made for these cruxes before we rely on them in making important cause prioritization decisions.
* Even on short timelines, the AI transition may be a protracted and patchy process, leaving many opportunities to act on longer timelines.
* Work in other cause areas will often make essential contributions to the AI transition going well.
* Projects that require cultural, social, and legal changes for success, and projects where opposing sides will both benefit from AI, will be more resistant to being solved by AI.
* Many of the reasons why AI might undermine projects in other cause areas (e.g. its unpredictable and destabilizing effects) would seem to undermine lots of work on AI as well.
* While an impending AI revolution should affect how we approach and prioritize non-AI (and AI) projects, doing this wisel
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TLDR
When we look across all jobs globally, many of us in the EA community occupy positions that would rank in the 99.9th percentile or higher by our own preferences within jobs that we could plausibly get.[1] Whether you work at an EA-aligned organization, hold a high-impact role elsewhere, or have a well-compensated position which allows you to make significant high effectiveness donations, your job situation is likely extraordinarily fortunate and high impact by global standards. This career conversations week, it's worth reflecting on this and considering how we can make the most of these opportunities.
Intro
I think job choice is one of the great advantages of development. Before the industrial revolution, nearly everyone had to be a hunter-gatherer or a farmer, and they typically didn’t get a choice between those.
Now there is typically some choice in low income countries, and typically a lot of choice in high income countries. This already suggests that having a job in your preferred field puts you in a high percentile of job choice. But for many in the EA community, the situation is even more fortunate.
The Mathematics of Job Preference
If you work at an EA-aligned organization and that is your top preference, you occupy an extraordinarily rare position. There are perhaps a few thousand such positions globally, out of the world's several billion jobs. Simple division suggests this puts you in roughly the 99.9999th percentile of job preference.
Even if you don't work directly for an EA organization but have secured:
* A job allowing significant donations
* A position with direct positive impact aligned with your values
* Work that combines your skills, interests, and preferred location
You likely still occupy a position in the 99.9th percentile or higher of global job preference matching. Even without the impact perspective, if you are working in your preferred field and preferred country, that may put you in the 99.9th percentile of job preference
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Summary
Following our co-founder Joey's recent transition announcement we're actively searching for exceptional leadership to join our C-level team and guide AIM into its next phase.
* Find the full job description here
* To apply, please visit the following link
* Recommend someone you think could be a great fit here
* Location: London strongly preferred. Remote candidates willing to work from London at least 3 months a year and otherwise overlapping at least 6 hours with 9 am to 5 pm BST will be considered. We are happy to sponsor UK work visas.
* Employment Type: Full-time (35 hours)
* Application Deadline: rolling until August 10, 2025
* Start Date: as soon as possible (with some flexibility for the right candidate)
* Compensation: £45,000–£90,000 (for details on our compensation policy see full job description)
Leadership Transition
On March 15th, Joey announced he's stepping away from his role as CEO of AIM, with his planned last day as December 1st. This follows our other co-founder Karolina's completed transition in 2024. Like Karolina, Joey will transition to a board member role while we bring in new leadership to guide AIM's next phase of growth.
The Opportunity
AIM is at a unique inflection point. We're seeking an exceptional leader to join Samantha and Devon on our C-level team and help shape the next era of one of the most impactful organizations in the EA ecosystem.
With foundations established (including a strong leadership team and funding runway), we're ready to scale our influence dramatically and see many exciting pathways to do so. While the current leadership team has a default 2026 strategic plan, we are open to a new CEO proposing radical departures. This might include:
* Proposing alternative ways to integrate or spin off existing or new programs
* Deciding to spend more resources trialling more experimental programs, or double down on Charity Entrepreneurship
* Expanding geographically or deepening impact in existing region
Thought: In what ways do EA orgs / funds go about things differently than in the rest of the non-profit (or even for-profit) world? If they do things differently: Why? How much has that been analyzed? How much have they looked into the literature / existing alternative approaches / talked to domain experts?
Naively, if the the thing they do differently is not related to the core differences between EA / that org and the rest of the world, then I'd expect that this is kind of like trying to re-invent the wheel and it won't be a good use of resources unless you have a good reason to think you can do better.
Here's a perspective I mentioned recently to someone:
Many people in EA seem to think that very few people outside the "self identifies as an EA" crowd really care about EA concerns. Similarly, many people seem to think that very few researchers outside of a handful of EA-affiliated AI safety researchers really care about existential risks from AI.
Whereas my perspective tends to be that the basic claims of EA are actually pretty uncontroversial. I've mentioned some of the basic ideas many times to people and I remember getting pushback I think only once - and that was from a self-professed Kantian who already knew about EA and rejected it because they associated it with Utilitarianism. Similarly, I've presented some of the basic ideas behind AI risk many times to engineers and I've only very rarely gotten any pushback. Mostly people totally agree that it's an important set of issues to work on, but there are also other issues we need to focus on (maybe even to a greater degree), they can't work on it themselves because they have a regular job, etc. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that for a lot of such people, if you compensate them sufficiently and remove the barriers that are preventing them from e.g., working on AGI safety, then they'd be highly motivated to work on it. I mean, sure, if I can get paid my regular salary or even more and I can also maybe help save the world, then that's fantastic!
I'm not saying that it's always worth removing all those barriers. In many cases it may be better to hire someone who is so motivated to do the job that they'd be willing to sacrifice for it. But in other cases it might be worth considering whether someone who isn't "part of EA" might totally agree that EA is great, and all you have to do is remove the barriers for that person (financial / career / reputational / etc.) and then they could make some really great contributions to the causes that EA cares about.
Questions:
[Note: This is a bit long for a shortform. I'm still thinking about this - I may move to a regular post once I've thought about it a bit more and maybe gotten some feedback from others.]