One of the shrimp-related interventions that animal advocates have worked on is ending eyestalk ablation - the act of cutting the eyes off of living mother shrimp.
Curious to hear how people feel about this kind of work?
(I haven't done the maths or read any academic work on this topic, but my assumption is that this is probably a robustly good thing, and good value for money?)
Datacenters built out of human neurons does sound pretty dystopian. Your headline proposal here, of trying to prevent the immediate and unregulated commercialisation of this tech, sounds very reasonable, and potentially achievable. May well be worth working on!
This is great, very thought-provoking. Your description of the "short-term pragmatism" mindset, and its strengths and weaknesses, feels spot-on to me. I hope this post is widely read and discussed. Congrats, Dilan!
Thanks for this! I'd be curious to hear what you think about the arguments against computational functionalism put forward by Anil Seth in this paper: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/conscious-artificial-intelligence-and-biological-naturalism/C9912A5BE9D806012E3C8B3AF612E39A
Thanks for the rapid and clear response, Luisa - it's very much appreciated. I'm incredibly relieved and pleased to hear that the Podcast will still be covering some non-AI stuff, even it it's less frequently than previously. It feels like those episodes have huge impact, including in worlds where we see a rapid AI-driven transformation of society - e.g. by increasing the chances that whoever/whatever wields power in the future cares about all moral patients, not just humans.
Hope you have fun making those, and all, future episodes :)
This is probably motivated reasoning on my part, but the more I think about this, I think it genuinely probably does make sense for 80k to try to maintain as big and broad an audience for the Podcast as possible, whilst also ramping up its AI content. The alternative would be to turn the Podcast effectively into an only-AI thing, which would presumably limit the audience quite a lot (?) I'm genuinely unsure what is the best strategy here, from 80k's point of view, if the objective is something like "maximise listenership for AI related content". Hopefully, if it's a close call, they might err on the side of broadness, in order to be cooperative with the wider EA community.
I'd love to hear in more detail about what this shift will mean for the 80,000 Hours Podcast, specifically.
The Podcast is a much-loved and hugely important piece of infrastructure for the entire EA movement. (Kudos to everyone involved over the years in making it so awesome - you deserve huge credit for building such a valuable brand and asset!)
Having a guest appear on it to talk about a certain issue can make a massive real-world difference, in terms of boosting interest, talent, and donations for that issue. To pick just one example: Meghan Barrett's episode on insects seems to have been super influential. I'm sure that other people in the community will also be able to pick out specific episodes which have made a huge difference to interest in, and real-world action on, a particular issue.
My guess is that to a large extent this boosted activity and impact for non-AI issues does not “funge” massively against work on AI. The people taking action on these different issues would probably not have alternatively devoted a similar level of resources to AI safety-related stuff. (Presumably there is *some* funging going on, but my gut instinct is that it's probably pretty low(?)) Non-AI-related content on the 80K Podcast has been hugely important for growing and energizing the whole EA movement and community.
Clearly, though, internally within the 80k team, there's an opportunity cost to producing it, versus only doing AI content.
It feels like it would be absolutely awful - perhaps close to disastrous - for the non-AI bits of EA, and adjacent topics, if the Podcast were to only feature AI-related content in future. It won't be completely obvious and salient that this is the effect. But, counterfactually, I think it will probably be really, really bad, going forward, to not have any new non-AI content on the Podcast.
It would be great to hear more about plans here. My guess (hope?!) is that it might still be advantageous to keep producing a range of content, in order to keep a broader listenership/wider “top-of-funnel”?
If the plan is to totally discontinue non-AI related content, I wonder if it would be possible to consider some steps that might be taken to ameliorate the effects of this on other issues and cause areas. For example, in a spirit of brainstorming, maybe 80k could allow other groups to record and release podcast episodes onto the 80k Podcast channel (or a new “vertical”/sub-brand of it)? (Obviously 80k would have a veto and only release stuff which they thought meets their high quality bar.) This feels like it could be really useful in terms of allowing non-AI groups to access the audience of the Podcast, whilst allowing 80k’s in-house resources to pivot to an AI focus.
Perhaps there are other cooperative options that could be considered along these lines if the plan is to only make AI content going forward.
I should stress again my admiration and gratitude for the 80k team in creating such a cool and valuable thing as the Podcast in the first place - I'm sure this sentiment is widely shared!
You write: "While many EAs tend to focus on private philanthropy, this crisis highlights why government action is indispensable."
I think this is totally right. Over the last few days, I think that EAs have over-focussed on "how can we donate directly to the programmes that are being cut", rather than "how can we influence governments, now and in the future, to maximise the amount of aid that goes to effective programmes". It's good that you are thinking politically about this. The leverage from influencing government policy is so high. The lessons of the last few days/weeks should be "more EAs need to think and act politically about global health and development, as that is where the real leverage is", rather than "how can we directly make up the shortfall on the ground". (Though of course I understand the very admirable instinct to do the latter...)
If you read the news coverage of this carefully, it's clear that the FCDO has got no idea exactly which bits of the aid budget it will cut in order to fit the new spending requirements.
So I think by far the most tractable thing to campaign on would be to ask the government to protect certain areas of aid spending, and cut others instead. This actually has the chance of changing something over the next few days/weeks.
Thanks for the thoughtful and truth-seeking post.
One of the shrimp-related interventions that animal advocates have worked on is ending eyestalk ablation - the act of cutting the eyes off of living mother shrimp.
Shrimp Welfare Project work on this - https://www.shrimpwelfareproject.org/blog/what-is-eyestalk-ablation / https://www.shrimpwelfareproject.org/eyestalk-ablation-free
And animal campaigners have won some commitments to end this practice - https://www.globalseafood.org/advocate/lidl-gb-bans-eyestalk-ablation-for-farmed-prawns-joining-nine-other-u-k-retailers/
Curious to hear how people feel about this kind of work?
(I haven't done the maths or read any academic work on this topic, but my assumption is that this is probably a robustly good thing, and good value for money?)
Datacenters built out of human neurons does sound pretty dystopian. Your headline proposal here, of trying to prevent the immediate and unregulated commercialisation of this tech, sounds very reasonable, and potentially achievable. May well be worth working on!
This is great, very thought-provoking. Your description of the "short-term pragmatism" mindset, and its strengths and weaknesses, feels spot-on to me. I hope this post is widely read and discussed. Congrats, Dilan!
Here is a thoughtful post with a constructive suggestion for how to run a small group meetup: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/MNxFL6Lry7w5nQaaH/jamie_harris-s-shortform?commentId=BuK7CGJuzzfjCdJZi
Thanks for this! I'd be curious to hear what you think about the arguments against computational functionalism put forward by Anil Seth in this paper: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/conscious-artificial-intelligence-and-biological-naturalism/C9912A5BE9D806012E3C8B3AF612E39A
Thanks for the rapid and clear response, Luisa - it's very much appreciated. I'm incredibly relieved and pleased to hear that the Podcast will still be covering some non-AI stuff, even it it's less frequently than previously. It feels like those episodes have huge impact, including in worlds where we see a rapid AI-driven transformation of society - e.g. by increasing the chances that whoever/whatever wields power in the future cares about all moral patients, not just humans.
Hope you have fun making those, and all, future episodes :)
This is probably motivated reasoning on my part, but the more I think about this, I think it genuinely probably does make sense for 80k to try to maintain as big and broad an audience for the Podcast as possible, whilst also ramping up its AI content. The alternative would be to turn the Podcast effectively into an only-AI thing, which would presumably limit the audience quite a lot (?) I'm genuinely unsure what is the best strategy here, from 80k's point of view, if the objective is something like "maximise listenership for AI related content". Hopefully, if it's a close call, they might err on the side of broadness, in order to be cooperative with the wider EA community.
I'd love to hear in more detail about what this shift will mean for the 80,000 Hours Podcast, specifically.
The Podcast is a much-loved and hugely important piece of infrastructure for the entire EA movement. (Kudos to everyone involved over the years in making it so awesome - you deserve huge credit for building such a valuable brand and asset!)
Having a guest appear on it to talk about a certain issue can make a massive real-world difference, in terms of boosting interest, talent, and donations for that issue. To pick just one example: Meghan Barrett's episode on insects seems to have been super influential. I'm sure that other people in the community will also be able to pick out specific episodes which have made a huge difference to interest in, and real-world action on, a particular issue.
My guess is that to a large extent this boosted activity and impact for non-AI issues does not “funge” massively against work on AI. The people taking action on these different issues would probably not have alternatively devoted a similar level of resources to AI safety-related stuff. (Presumably there is *some* funging going on, but my gut instinct is that it's probably pretty low(?)) Non-AI-related content on the 80K Podcast has been hugely important for growing and energizing the whole EA movement and community.
Clearly, though, internally within the 80k team, there's an opportunity cost to producing it, versus only doing AI content.
It feels like it would be absolutely awful - perhaps close to disastrous - for the non-AI bits of EA, and adjacent topics, if the Podcast were to only feature AI-related content in future. It won't be completely obvious and salient that this is the effect. But, counterfactually, I think it will probably be really, really bad, going forward, to not have any new non-AI content on the Podcast.
It would be great to hear more about plans here. My guess (hope?!) is that it might still be advantageous to keep producing a range of content, in order to keep a broader listenership/wider “top-of-funnel”?
If the plan is to totally discontinue non-AI related content, I wonder if it would be possible to consider some steps that might be taken to ameliorate the effects of this on other issues and cause areas. For example, in a spirit of brainstorming, maybe 80k could allow other groups to record and release podcast episodes onto the 80k Podcast channel (or a new “vertical”/sub-brand of it)? (Obviously 80k would have a veto and only release stuff which they thought meets their high quality bar.) This feels like it could be really useful in terms of allowing non-AI groups to access the audience of the Podcast, whilst allowing 80k’s in-house resources to pivot to an AI focus.
Perhaps there are other cooperative options that could be considered along these lines if the plan is to only make AI content going forward.
I should stress again my admiration and gratitude for the 80k team in creating such a cool and valuable thing as the Podcast in the first place - I'm sure this sentiment is widely shared!
You write: "While many EAs tend to focus on private philanthropy, this crisis highlights why government action is indispensable."
I think this is totally right. Over the last few days, I think that EAs have over-focussed on "how can we donate directly to the programmes that are being cut", rather than "how can we influence governments, now and in the future, to maximise the amount of aid that goes to effective programmes". It's good that you are thinking politically about this. The leverage from influencing government policy is so high. The lessons of the last few days/weeks should be "more EAs need to think and act politically about global health and development, as that is where the real leverage is", rather than "how can we directly make up the shortfall on the ground". (Though of course I understand the very admirable instinct to do the latter...)
If you read the news coverage of this carefully, it's clear that the FCDO has got no idea exactly which bits of the aid budget it will cut in order to fit the new spending requirements.
So I think by far the most tractable thing to campaign on would be to ask the government to protect certain areas of aid spending, and cut others instead. This actually has the chance of changing something over the next few days/weeks.