Great, I really applaud this initiative, and it feels to me that it can be a real credibility builder. IMHO there is no question at all that artificial protein will dominate our diets by the end of the century, and hopefully a lot soon. It is difficult, but the current system is so bad, on so many levels, that even imperfect solution will be just so much better, cheaper, safer, more ethical ...
I had one additional though: this week I did a TEA for a new process. I knew quite a bit about the process itself but hadn't done a TEA before. I asked Claude Pro to help, and it was amazing. Both for the insights and for the formatting - it gave me a 10-page Excel with a very flexible TEA.
What I particularly liked was a couple of places where it caught me out ("you didn't include the energy consumption of Step X, which can be significant") or questioned my assumptions ("if you make product X, your TEA will be dominated by Cost Y, which is not realistic, because in that case you would change Condition Z" ... really insightful things).
I would never use an AI-generated TEA as a final model, but it is a great way to get an 80/20 model that people can use as a starting point.
(if this seems useful, happy to go into more detail about this, but my guess is that you can do it yourselves, it's very intuitive once you're very clear about what you want and what you do not want Claude to assume).
(I'm all for slowing down AI, but also astonished by what the AI we have already can do!)
I used to work in Pharma. There are organisations like the FDA which need to approve a drug before it can be put on the market. We need legislation to create something similar for AI models. And the burden of proof is on the drug-maker - prove that your drug is safe. Same is needed for AI.
I am an engineer. If I build a bridge and it collapses, I am responsible. I will pay millions (or my insurance will) and I will spend the rest of my life in jail, unless I can demonstate (burden of proof is on me) that I did everything exactly as it should be done, and the collapse was due to something I could not have foreseen and the regulations did not foresee. Why not something similar for AI developers - proper liability.
When I work, a company pays me. Let's say they pay me $100,000 per year. In most countries, the company pays social security on top of this, and other costs, maybe $20,000 per year, to the government. Then I pay taxes and social security, and local taxes. Maybe another $50,000. So for every net $50,000 I earn, the company pays $70,000 to the government in one form or another. If they use an AI agent, they can just pay $50,000 (or whatever) and the government doesn't take one penny. If AI's replace humans as workers, why should humans pay tax, and employers pay tax to hire humans, but AI's not pay tax, and companies pay not tax to hire AI's?? If AI "workers" were taxed at the same rate as humans, replacing humans with AI would be a lot less financially interesting. The government needs to start taxing AI workers in the same way as they tax human workers.
If I commit a crime, the government punishes me. When an AI agent commits a crime, someone must be punished. Let the AI developer and the AI owner/user fight it out in court, but at least one of them must go to jail. Currently they each just deflect blame and nobody pays.
And so on .... there are so many good and very reasonable and fair ways that AI could be managed so that there is a genuine incentive on AI developers to make their AI's behave.
When I worked at a multi-national, I learned (too late) a concept called PIE, which was eye-opening.
P = Performance - this is what you actually do, the contributions you make.
I = Image - this is how you and your performance are perceived.
E = Exposure - this is who sees your work.
The point of this was that many of us work on the P only, we assume that the I and E will follow. But often they don't unless we actively manage them. A lot of corporate frustration is about people who focus only on P angriliy complaining about people who get ahead while they don't - and often those who get ahead are people who focus on I and E - but also P.
The trainer's central thesis was this: YOU are responsible for your P, your I and your E. If you focus only on your Performance, don't blame anyone else when you don't get promoted. You need to take ownership for how you are perceived and who perceives you.
Here's where it got interesting. People pushed back: that isn't fair! I focus on doing my job, I do it extremely well, why should "image" matter? Why should exposure matter?
And the response was not what they expected. It was not defensive at all. The trainer said: "That is not true. If you are not focused on image and exposure, you are not doing your job as well as you could be. Because you are not setting an example that people follow. You are not sharing your ideas for others to learn from. You are not Influencing enough.
I sometimes think this is a great concept to share within EA. Because within EA, there are some people who do a fantastic job of getting their ideas out there, about getting talked about, about moving the Overton window. And there are others who also do brilliant work, but much of it stays within the EA community.
And in the end, if we're looking at impact, we have to ask: who has the most impact? Not: who wrote the best articles? Not: who put in the most hours? But the impact.
This week, one guy did more for AI Safety than 1000 people have done in 10 years. He resigned (P), but unlike many before him, he somehow grasped the media moment, came across as a very normal, not nerdy guy, who truly cared about humanity (I). And got the exposure via his posts and major interviews. (E) He's surely not the "best" AI Safety person ever, but he had a huge impact by getting the image and exposure right.
I know there was also a lot that was out of his control, the timing, the background and so on. But it should be an example to us.
Hey, I have experience with the preliminary parts of this - chemical engineering, but not in the context of cultivated meat. Happy to help / advise.
I have run industrial workshops where we'd get everyone in a room, start with a blank sheet of paper and end up with an 80/20 process flow diagram, highlighting the certainties and the open questions and the opportunities for further research, and then move on from this (with a different group sometimes) to build an 80/20 TEA.
To be clear, what I have run was not as computationally intense as you propose. The model with Monte-Carlo syntheses etc would typically be a secondary step. The first step would be to get the right information into a flowsheet, then into a TEA, and for each parameter to have a clear idea of the sources of variability and the uncertainties. Then you can even run the Monte Carlo simulation on the TEA itself if it's simple enough.
It's not rocket-surgery, as W would say. Just structure and getting the right people, the right knowledge and the right mentality in the room, and getting the right pre-work done.
Since I don't work in this field, I can't really say to what extent the bit I could help with has already been done ... if not, I'd be happy to help, time permitting. No interest in being paid to help, at least for the first iteration.
I think all your comments are valid. I definitely did not agree with the conclusions or the negativity towards utilitarianism as the vast majority of EA's see it.
My motive for sharing this was: in previous posts I've shared examples of where EA's are unjustly considered, basically, to weird to be relevant, without any clear justification of why. In this article, at least the allegedly flawed assumptions of EA's were clearly outlined, and it was not outrageous to argue that, yes, some EA's do think like that sometimes.
So, IMHO we all need to be ready with arguments like what you've outlined, to say "I can see why you think that - but here is a better way to think about it, and I think it will reassure you that most EA's, even those who call themselves utilitarians, do not have these crazy ideas."
100% feel the same way. Thank you for stating it so clearly.
It is sickening to watch our leaders do exactly nothing, as if this was some sort of joke.
It makes me incredibly angry that, at what may be the most important time in human history, at a time when the world desperately needs good leadership, the most powerful man in the world is such a vile, ignorant moron without a care for anything but his own ego and his bank account. This is what makes me fear that it really could get to extinction, because he is going to let humanity expire rather than listen to advice that he doesn't agree with. And those spineless Republicans who refuse to stop him. And the pathetic EU leadership who talk a good game but ultimately care more about profit. It is sad, but humanity depends on the wisdom and decency of Xi Jinping - normally we'd be hoping we could persuade him to be reasonable, now it's likely that he will be the reasonable one.
It makes me angry that so many people are stating so openly, factually, that humanity may be destroyed. We know they are the experts, but, as Al Gore would say, believing them would be inconvenient for us, so we just ignore them.
It makes me angry that we have a world in which experts are no longer trusted. Yes, we understand how this has been achieved and for what ends, but at times like this the world needs people who can inspire universal trust, and instead anyone who disagrees is labelled a fraud or a traitor or naive ...
I suppose writing this post has made me realise that I don't feel lonely so much as angry.
I would counter that EA / Rationalism is not a set of ideas but a way of thinking, analogous to the scientific method. You can disagree with the ideas that some EA's or Rationalists have, but you cannot argue that approaching a topic using data and logic and science is flawed. That is just plain wrong.
For years now, we have seen a constant attack on the scientific method, on science itself. And IMHO we have not pushed back correctly, and specifically, we have not pushed back hard enough and bluntly enough.
By trying to be reasonable with people who are not being reasonable, we have only lent credibility to their false ideas. And the result is that the most advanced democracy in the world officially denies climate change and has a Secretary of Health who trusts tictoc influencers more than doctors.
We need to call bullshit on arguments like this. It is bullshit. If you disagree with the conclusion, sure, argue against that based on logic or data. But you don't get to dismiss it just because the people who reached that conclusion used logic and data and science to reach it. You just don't. It's not an "everyone is entitled to their opinion" case - it's just plain wrong.
We need to be willing to stand behind our conclusions, and call out those who claim to refute them with ad hominem arguments.
I'm not sure what to think. It feels like EA's are cool with being seen as weird. And I'm not cool with that, because IMHO it dramatically reduces our potential for impact. This being an example, where arguments which make sense about AI safety get rejected for no reason other than that they come from "Rationalists."
Ultimately do we want to feel good about ourselves, reassured that we're right even as everyone else is wrong, or do we actually want to make sure that the right decisions get taken to prevent AI catastrophe?
My problem is that it seems like ALL the coverage that EA's get is like this.
I do take your point that EA's may seem weird, but most of the EA's I know are mostly weird in a good way - more caring, more focused on helping, more concerned with the victims, ... - but we allow all this to be overshadowed by the perceived weirdness of using logic and data to help people more, or by stereotypes based on more controversial ideas like longtermism taken to its logical extreme.
And I'm not worried about its effect on our delicate egos .. I'm worried by how this limits our potential to impact the vital debates of our time. It frustrates me that EA arguments can be dismissed by ad hominem arguments. This article basically says :`"we can ignore those concerns, they only come from those weird EA's."
Great, I really applaud this initiative, and it feels to me that it can be a real credibility builder. IMHO there is no question at all that artificial protein will dominate our diets by the end of the century, and hopefully a lot soon. It is difficult, but the current system is so bad, on so many levels, that even imperfect solution will be just so much better, cheaper, safer, more ethical ...
I had one additional though: this week I did a TEA for a new process. I knew quite a bit about the process itself but hadn't done a TEA before. I asked Claude Pro to help, and it was amazing. Both for the insights and for the formatting - it gave me a 10-page Excel with a very flexible TEA.
What I particularly liked was a couple of places where it caught me out ("you didn't include the energy consumption of Step X, which can be significant") or questioned my assumptions ("if you make product X, your TEA will be dominated by Cost Y, which is not realistic, because in that case you would change Condition Z" ... really insightful things).
I would never use an AI-generated TEA as a final model, but it is a great way to get an 80/20 model that people can use as a starting point.
(if this seems useful, happy to go into more detail about this, but my guess is that you can do it yourselves, it's very intuitive once you're very clear about what you want and what you do not want Claude to assume).
(I'm all for slowing down AI, but also astonished by what the AI we have already can do!)
I used to work in Pharma. There are organisations like the FDA which need to approve a drug before it can be put on the market. We need legislation to create something similar for AI models. And the burden of proof is on the drug-maker - prove that your drug is safe. Same is needed for AI.
I am an engineer. If I build a bridge and it collapses, I am responsible. I will pay millions (or my insurance will) and I will spend the rest of my life in jail, unless I can demonstate (burden of proof is on me) that I did everything exactly as it should be done, and the collapse was due to something I could not have foreseen and the regulations did not foresee. Why not something similar for AI developers - proper liability.
When I work, a company pays me. Let's say they pay me $100,000 per year. In most countries, the company pays social security on top of this, and other costs, maybe $20,000 per year, to the government. Then I pay taxes and social security, and local taxes. Maybe another $50,000. So for every net $50,000 I earn, the company pays $70,000 to the government in one form or another.
If they use an AI agent, they can just pay $50,000 (or whatever) and the government doesn't take one penny. If AI's replace humans as workers, why should humans pay tax, and employers pay tax to hire humans, but AI's not pay tax, and companies pay not tax to hire AI's?? If AI "workers" were taxed at the same rate as humans, replacing humans with AI would be a lot less financially interesting.
The government needs to start taxing AI workers in the same way as they tax human workers.
If I commit a crime, the government punishes me. When an AI agent commits a crime, someone must be punished. Let the AI developer and the AI owner/user fight it out in court, but at least one of them must go to jail. Currently they each just deflect blame and nobody pays.
And so on .... there are so many good and very reasonable and fair ways that AI could be managed so that there is a genuine incentive on AI developers to make their AI's behave.
I love this post.
When I worked at a multi-national, I learned (too late) a concept called PIE, which was eye-opening.
The point of this was that many of us work on the P only, we assume that the I and E will follow. But often they don't unless we actively manage them. A lot of corporate frustration is about people who focus only on P angriliy complaining about people who get ahead while they don't - and often those who get ahead are people who focus on I and E - but also P.
The trainer's central thesis was this: YOU are responsible for your P, your I and your E. If you focus only on your Performance, don't blame anyone else when you don't get promoted. You need to take ownership for how you are perceived and who perceives you.
Here's where it got interesting. People pushed back: that isn't fair! I focus on doing my job, I do it extremely well, why should "image" matter? Why should exposure matter?
And the response was not what they expected. It was not defensive at all. The trainer said: "That is not true. If you are not focused on image and exposure, you are not doing your job as well as you could be. Because you are not setting an example that people follow. You are not sharing your ideas for others to learn from. You are not Influencing enough.
I sometimes think this is a great concept to share within EA. Because within EA, there are some people who do a fantastic job of getting their ideas out there, about getting talked about, about moving the Overton window. And there are others who also do brilliant work, but much of it stays within the EA community.
And in the end, if we're looking at impact, we have to ask: who has the most impact? Not: who wrote the best articles? Not: who put in the most hours? But the impact.
This week, one guy did more for AI Safety than 1000 people have done in 10 years. He resigned (P), but unlike many before him, he somehow grasped the media moment, came across as a very normal, not nerdy guy, who truly cared about humanity (I). And got the exposure via his posts and major interviews. (E) He's surely not the "best" AI Safety person ever, but he had a huge impact by getting the image and exposure right.
I know there was also a lot that was out of his control, the timing, the background and so on. But it should be an example to us.
Hey, I have experience with the preliminary parts of this - chemical engineering, but not in the context of cultivated meat. Happy to help / advise.
I have run industrial workshops where we'd get everyone in a room, start with a blank sheet of paper and end up with an 80/20 process flow diagram, highlighting the certainties and the open questions and the opportunities for further research, and then move on from this (with a different group sometimes) to build an 80/20 TEA.
To be clear, what I have run was not as computationally intense as you propose. The model with Monte-Carlo syntheses etc would typically be a secondary step. The first step would be to get the right information into a flowsheet, then into a TEA, and for each parameter to have a clear idea of the sources of variability and the uncertainties. Then you can even run the Monte Carlo simulation on the TEA itself if it's simple enough.
It's not rocket-surgery, as W would say. Just structure and getting the right people, the right knowledge and the right mentality in the room, and getting the right pre-work done.
Since I don't work in this field, I can't really say to what extent the bit I could help with has already been done ... if not, I'd be happy to help, time permitting. No interest in being paid to help, at least for the first iteration.
I think all your comments are valid. I definitely did not agree with the conclusions or the negativity towards utilitarianism as the vast majority of EA's see it.
My motive for sharing this was: in previous posts I've shared examples of where EA's are unjustly considered, basically, to weird to be relevant, without any clear justification of why. In this article, at least the allegedly flawed assumptions of EA's were clearly outlined, and it was not outrageous to argue that, yes, some EA's do think like that sometimes.
So, IMHO we all need to be ready with arguments like what you've outlined, to say "I can see why you think that - but here is a better way to think about it, and I think it will reassure you that most EA's, even those who call themselves utilitarians, do not have these crazy ideas."
100% feel the same way. Thank you for stating it so clearly.
It is sickening to watch our leaders do exactly nothing, as if this was some sort of joke.
It makes me incredibly angry that, at what may be the most important time in human history, at a time when the world desperately needs good leadership, the most powerful man in the world is such a vile, ignorant moron without a care for anything but his own ego and his bank account. This is what makes me fear that it really could get to extinction, because he is going to let humanity expire rather than listen to advice that he doesn't agree with. And those spineless Republicans who refuse to stop him. And the pathetic EU leadership who talk a good game but ultimately care more about profit. It is sad, but humanity depends on the wisdom and decency of Xi Jinping - normally we'd be hoping we could persuade him to be reasonable, now it's likely that he will be the reasonable one.
It makes me angry that so many people are stating so openly, factually, that humanity may be destroyed. We know they are the experts, but, as Al Gore would say, believing them would be inconvenient for us, so we just ignore them.
It makes me angry that we have a world in which experts are no longer trusted. Yes, we understand how this has been achieved and for what ends, but at times like this the world needs people who can inspire universal trust, and instead anyone who disagrees is labelled a fraud or a traitor or naive ...
I suppose writing this post has made me realise that I don't feel lonely so much as angry.
I have to agree that the motivation and talent of AIM staff is pretty unique!
I would counter that EA / Rationalism is not a set of ideas but a way of thinking, analogous to the scientific method. You can disagree with the ideas that some EA's or Rationalists have, but you cannot argue that approaching a topic using data and logic and science is flawed. That is just plain wrong.
For years now, we have seen a constant attack on the scientific method, on science itself. And IMHO we have not pushed back correctly, and specifically, we have not pushed back hard enough and bluntly enough.
By trying to be reasonable with people who are not being reasonable, we have only lent credibility to their false ideas. And the result is that the most advanced democracy in the world officially denies climate change and has a Secretary of Health who trusts tictoc influencers more than doctors.
We need to call bullshit on arguments like this. It is bullshit. If you disagree with the conclusion, sure, argue against that based on logic or data. But you don't get to dismiss it just because the people who reached that conclusion used logic and data and science to reach it. You just don't. It's not an "everyone is entitled to their opinion" case - it's just plain wrong.
We need to be willing to stand behind our conclusions, and call out those who claim to refute them with ad hominem arguments.
I'm not sure what to think. It feels like EA's are cool with being seen as weird. And I'm not cool with that, because IMHO it dramatically reduces our potential for impact. This being an example, where arguments which make sense about AI safety get rejected for no reason other than that they come from "Rationalists."
Ultimately do we want to feel good about ourselves, reassured that we're right even as everyone else is wrong, or do we actually want to make sure that the right decisions get taken to prevent AI catastrophe?
My problem is that it seems like ALL the coverage that EA's get is like this.
I do take your point that EA's may seem weird, but most of the EA's I know are mostly weird in a good way - more caring, more focused on helping, more concerned with the victims, ... - but we allow all this to be overshadowed by the perceived weirdness of using logic and data to help people more, or by stereotypes based on more controversial ideas like longtermism taken to its logical extreme.
And I'm not worried about its effect on our delicate egos .. I'm worried by how this limits our potential to impact the vital debates of our time. It frustrates me that EA arguments can be dismissed by ad hominem arguments. This article basically says :`"we can ignore those concerns, they only come from those weird EA's."