Larks' claims seem pretty easy to verify, and I think you failed to address all of them.
In 1965, UNRWA changed the eligibility requirements to be a Palestinian refugee to include third-generation descendants, and in 1982, it extended it again, to include all descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, regardless of whether they had been granted citizenship elsewhere. This is not how refugee status is determined for basically any other group. Interestingly, under this definition, the majority of the world's Jews would have refugee status as well (GPT-5 estimates over 99% of Jews fit this definition). I think this is pretty relevant to your objection about Israel's Law of Return. https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/17/unrwa-has-changed-the-definition-of-refugee/
Israeli intelligence assesses that some 10% of all UNRWA employees in Gaza have ties to terror organizations, in addition to at least 12 employees it says were involved in the October 7 terror onslaught in southern Israel, according to a new report.
My heart goes out to the civilians in Gaza, and I hope a peaceful resolution can be found for this conflict soon. But UNRWA doesn't seem like a high integrity organization, and I seriously doubt donating to them is the best way to help the people of Gaza.
I don't think there are other orgs filling Arkose's niche and the data I've seen suggests Arkose was doing a good job. I know funders have good reasons for not sharing their takes on every grant rejection, but it's a shame there isn't more insight into this.
Thanks for clarifying! Really appreciate you engaging with this.
Re: It takes a lot longer. It seems like it takes a lot of time for you to monitor the comments on this post and update your top level post in response. The cost of doing that after you post publicly, instead of before, is that people who read your initial post are a lot less likely to read the updated one. So I don't think you save a massive amount of time here, and you increase the chance other people become misinformed about orgs.
Re: Orgs can still respond to the post after it's published. Some orgs aren't posting some information publicly on purpose, but they will tell you things in confidence if you ask privately. If you publicly blast them on one of these topics, they will not publicly respond. I know EAs can be allergic to these kind of dynamics, but politics is qualitatively different than ML research; managing relationships with multiple stakeholders with opposing views is delicate, and there are a bunch of bad actors working against AI safety in DC. You might be surprised by what kind of information is very dangerous for orgs to discuss publicly.
I'm just curious, have you discussed any of your concerns with somebody who has worked in policy for the US Government?
I appreciate the effort you’ve put into this, and your analysis makes sense based on publicly available data and your worldview. However, many policy organizations are working on initiatives that haven’t been/can't be publicly discussed, which might lead you to make some incorrect conclusions. For example, I'm glad Malo clarified MIRI does indeed work with policymakers in this comment thread.
Tone is difficult to convey online, so I want to clarify I'm saying the next statement gently: I think if you do this kind of report--that a ton of people are reading and taking seriously--you have some responsibility to send your notes to the mentioned organizations for fact checking before you post.
I also want to note: the EA community does not have good intuitions around how politics works or what kind of information is net productive for policy organizations to share. The solution is not to blindly defer to people who say they understand politics, but I am worried that our community norms actively work against us in this space. Consider checking some of your criticisms of policy orgs with a person who has worked for the US Government; getting an insider's perspective on what makes sense/seems suspicious could be useful.
This is a really complex space with lots of moving parts; very cool to see how you've compiled/analyzed everything! Haven't finished going through your report yet, but it looks awesome :)
This course sounds cool! Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be too much relevant material out there.
This is a stretch, but I think there's probably some cool computational modeling to be done with human value datasets (e.g., 70,000 responses to variations on the trolley problem). What kinds of universal human values can we uncover? https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1911517117
For digestible content on technical AI safety, Robert Miles makes good videos. https://www.youtube.com/c/robertmilesai
Larks' claims seem pretty easy to verify, and I think you failed to address all of them.
My heart goes out to the civilians in Gaza, and I hope a peaceful resolution can be found for this conflict soon. But UNRWA doesn't seem like a high integrity organization, and I seriously doubt donating to them is the best way to help the people of Gaza.
I don't think there are other orgs filling Arkose's niche and the data I've seen suggests Arkose was doing a good job. I know funders have good reasons for not sharing their takes on every grant rejection, but it's a shame there isn't more insight into this.
Such an interesting read, thank you!
Thanks for clarifying! Really appreciate you engaging with this.
Re: It takes a lot longer. It seems like it takes a lot of time for you to monitor the comments on this post and update your top level post in response. The cost of doing that after you post publicly, instead of before, is that people who read your initial post are a lot less likely to read the updated one. So I don't think you save a massive amount of time here, and you increase the chance other people become misinformed about orgs.
Re: Orgs can still respond to the post after it's published. Some orgs aren't posting some information publicly on purpose, but they will tell you things in confidence if you ask privately. If you publicly blast them on one of these topics, they will not publicly respond. I know EAs can be allergic to these kind of dynamics, but politics is qualitatively different than ML research; managing relationships with multiple stakeholders with opposing views is delicate, and there are a bunch of bad actors working against AI safety in DC. You might be surprised by what kind of information is very dangerous for orgs to discuss publicly.
I'm just curious, have you discussed any of your concerns with somebody who has worked in policy for the US Government?
Thanks for being thoughtful about this! Could you clarify what your cost benefit analysis was here? I'm quite curious!
I appreciate the effort you’ve put into this, and your analysis makes sense based on publicly available data and your worldview. However, many policy organizations are working on initiatives that haven’t been/can't be publicly discussed, which might lead you to make some incorrect conclusions. For example, I'm glad Malo clarified MIRI does indeed work with policymakers in this comment thread.
Tone is difficult to convey online, so I want to clarify I'm saying the next statement gently: I think if you do this kind of report--that a ton of people are reading and taking seriously--you have some responsibility to send your notes to the mentioned organizations for fact checking before you post.
I also want to note: the EA community does not have good intuitions around how politics works or what kind of information is net productive for policy organizations to share. The solution is not to blindly defer to people who say they understand politics, but I am worried that our community norms actively work against us in this space. Consider checking some of your criticisms of policy orgs with a person who has worked for the US Government; getting an insider's perspective on what makes sense/seems suspicious could be useful.
This is a really complex space with lots of moving parts; very cool to see how you've compiled/analyzed everything! Haven't finished going through your report yet, but it looks awesome :)
This looks so cool! Good luck!!!
This course sounds cool! Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be too much relevant material out there.
This is a stretch, but I think there's probably some cool computational modeling to be done with human value datasets (e.g., 70,000 responses to variations on the trolley problem). What kinds of universal human values can we uncover? https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1911517117
For digestible content on technical AI safety, Robert Miles makes good videos. https://www.youtube.com/c/robertmilesai
Thanks for the clarification, too many Carnegies!