I was extremely disappointed to see this tweet from Liron Shapira revealing that the Centre for AI Safety fired a recent hire, John Sherman, for stating that members of the public would attempt to destroy AI labs if they understood the magnitude of AI risk. Capitulating to this sort of pressure campaign is not the right path for EA, which should have a focus on seeking the truth rather than playing along with social-status games, and is not even the right path for PR (it makes you look like you think the campaigners have valid points, which in this case is not true). This makes me think less of CAIS' decision-makers.
Ya, really sad to hear that!
I mean, if they were going to fire him for that, maybe just don't hire him. Feels kind of mercurial that they were shamed into caning him so easily/soon.
Ofc, I can understand nonviolence being, like, an important institutional messaging northstar lol. But the vibes are kind of off when you are going to fire a recently hired podcaster bc of a cringe compilation of their show. Seriously, what the hell?
I do not think listening to that podcast made me more violent. In fact, the thought experiments and ideation like what he was touching on is, like, perfectly reasonable given the stakes he is laying out and the urgency he is advocating. Like, it's not crazy ground to cover; he talks for hours. Whatever lol, at least I think it was understandable in context.
Part of it feels like the equivalent of having to lobby against "civilian nuclear warheads". And you say "I wish that only a small nuclear detonation would occur when an accidental detonation does happen, but the fact is there's likely to be a massive nuclear chain reaction." and then getting absolutely BLASTED after someone clips you saying that you actually WISH a "small nuclear detonation" would occur. What a sadist you must be!
This feels like such stupid politics. I really want John Sherman to land on his feet. I was quite excited to see him take the role. Maybe that org was just not the right fit though...
Hard to know the full story but for me this is a weak update against CAIS's judgment.
Right now CAIS is one out of a total of maybe two orgs (along with FLI) pushing for AI legislation that both (1) openly care about x-risk and (2) are sufficiently Respectable TM* to get funding from big donors. This move could be an attempt to maintain CAIS's image as Respectable TM. My guess is it's the wrong move but I have a lot of uncertainty. I think firing people due to public pressure is generally a bad idea although I'm not confident that that's what actually happened.
*I hope my capitalization makes this clear but to be explicit, I don't think Respectable TM is the same thing as "actually respectable". For example, MIRI is actually respectable, but isn't Respectable TM.
Edit: I just re-read the CAIS tweet, from the wording it is clear that CAIS meant one of two things: "We are bowing to public pressure" or "We didn't realize John Sherman would say things like this, and we consider it a fireable offense". Neither one is a good look IMO.
I have no idea about this particular case, but there are difficult comms tradeoffs to be made.
If your are working for an advocacy org, sometimes it might be important to make messaging compromises to build alliance and get policy through. I can see a good argument that a public comment like this could make others work at the org a lot harder, so it might not be the best job for him in that case. People need to be saying stuff like he said, but maybe in a different org?
Truth seeking is important. So is building alliances.
I'm skeptical of metrics like "x% of people involved said they were satisfied" for estimating cost-effectiveness. Customer satisfaction doesn't really connect very well to any of the things I care about; in most cases I'm happier with a rough estimate of lives saved/units of suffering prevented/QALYs purchased/etc. per dollar than with a more precise accounting of things that touch less directly on the end goal.
I was extremely disappointed to see this tweet from Liron Shapira revealing that the Centre for AI Safety fired a recent hire, John Sherman, for stating that members of the public would attempt to destroy AI labs if they understood the magnitude of AI risk. Capitulating to this sort of pressure campaign is not the right path for EA, which should have a focus on seeking the truth rather than playing along with social-status games, and is not even the right path for PR (it makes you look like you think the campaigners have valid points, which in this case is not true). This makes me think less of CAIS' decision-makers.
Ya, really sad to hear that!
I mean, if they were going to fire him for that, maybe just don't hire him. Feels kind of mercurial that they were shamed into caning him so easily/soon.
Ofc, I can understand nonviolence being, like, an important institutional messaging northstar lol. But the vibes are kind of off when you are going to fire a recently hired podcaster bc of a cringe compilation of their show. Seriously, what the hell?
I do not think listening to that podcast made me more violent. In fact, the thought experiments and ideation like what he was touch... (read more)