I agree that many of the barriers to cultivated meat could be overcome post AGI, although I worry that scaling alt proteins isn't the path of least resistance to solving climate change (which i think is the most politically salient argument for trasitioning away from factory farming) or a number of other problems (health concerns, food security, biosecurity, and of course animal welfare)
In particular, it is plausible to me that AGI could rapidly reduce our reliance on fossils fuels and or mitigate the impacts of climate change. For example, we could rapidly scale up renewable energy supplies, more efficiently utilise the energy we already etc.
The effects of factory farming on the environment, the welfare of animals, the health effects etc hasn't been enough of an incentive to encourage investment and deregulation. Even if cultivated meat becomes easier to scale, if the incentives for doing so diminish at a similar rate we might be no more likely to do so than we are right now.
I think if I'm right than it might make sense to focus on problems alt proteins will be uniquely well suited to solve. I think food security might be in this category, although I'm less sure.
I'm unsure how effective bootcamps like this can be? Depends in the cause, but for areas like animal welfare the best skull building comes from getting directly involved. In these cases, it seems that directing people to opportunities which expose them to those skills is much more impactful than attempting to impart those skills via a boot camp. I'm also unsure if EA groups are well equipped to know what's skills are most on demand and, more importantly, how to develope them.
I agree if this is possible we should attempt this more often.
In community building, we often optimise for "value alignment". This seems to be used to mean lots of different things. One definition that seems reasonably correct, is that one agrees with the basic EA principles. However, I think the trait I look for in budding committee, is not necessarily this. There are members that would self describe as utilitarian, or rationalist, but don't feel excited about the prospect of a highly impactful career.
On the other hand, there are people who are excited about the EA ideas, will read posts if you mention them, have mixed but strong takes and when they're unsure, will be agentic to try things out. I think this is much more predictive of people following through on EA concepts, and isn't frequently correlated with initially agreeing with the values.
I agree that many of the barriers to cultivated meat could be overcome post AGI, although I worry that scaling alt proteins isn't the path of least resistance to solving climate change (which i think is the most politically salient argument for trasitioning away from factory farming) or a number of other problems (health concerns, food security, biosecurity, and of course animal welfare)
In particular, it is plausible to me that AGI could rapidly reduce our reliance on fossils fuels and or mitigate the impacts of climate change. For example, we could rapidly scale up renewable energy supplies, more efficiently utilise the energy we already etc.
The effects of factory farming on the environment, the welfare of animals, the health effects etc hasn't been enough of an incentive to encourage investment and deregulation. Even if cultivated meat becomes easier to scale, if the incentives for doing so diminish at a similar rate we might be no more likely to do so than we are right now.
I think if I'm right than it might make sense to focus on problems alt proteins will be uniquely well suited to solve. I think food security might be in this category, although I'm less sure.
I'm unsure how effective bootcamps like this can be? Depends in the cause, but for areas like animal welfare the best skull building comes from getting directly involved. In these cases, it seems that directing people to opportunities which expose them to those skills is much more impactful than attempting to impart those skills via a boot camp. I'm also unsure if EA groups are well equipped to know what's skills are most on demand and, more importantly, how to develope them.
I agree if this is possible we should attempt this more often.
In community building, we often optimise for "value alignment". This seems to be used to mean lots of different things. One definition that seems reasonably correct, is that one agrees with the basic EA principles. However, I think the trait I look for in budding committee, is not necessarily this. There are members that would self describe as utilitarian, or rationalist, but don't feel excited about the prospect of a highly impactful career.
On the other hand, there are people who are excited about the EA ideas, will read posts if you mention them, have mixed but strong takes and when they're unsure, will be agentic to try things out. I think this is much more predictive of people following through on EA concepts, and isn't frequently correlated with initially agreeing with the values.