Hi, thanks for working on this! Your post provoked some interesting thoughts. I'm interested in this topic from the biodiversity/extinction angle, so I'm not sure if I'd be a good fit. Here are some thoughts I had:
I am expecting a lot of damage from support infrastructure - power generation, data centers, transmission lines, and mining before I see direct damage from autonomous robots. This is just because AI is so information-centric right now, although autonomous machines are coming shortly. 

I think the most damage would come from the increase in doing work that was too impractical before - things like spraying for pests constantly instead of a few times a year. Fishing constantly. Scanning constantly. So damage from increased disturbance and an increase in activities that were previously not done. 

However, this might in some cases look worse but be better, so it seems really important to compare to what it is replacing. For example, if you spray constantly for pests, maybe you use less pesticide overall and keep populations low on your crops, without off-target pesticide drift to surrounding areas causing mass die-offs. 

I'm expecting the most increase in AI activities from aerial drones because they are easily built and deployed in a wide variety of environments for a lot of activities. (Rather than androids, vehicles, or factory machine arms).

Something from the information side of things - AI unearthing, deducing, and providing more information to rare species collectors might endanger rare populations of birds/insects/plants/etc as they collect them to death to sell on the black market. Secrecy is their main mode of protection right now.

Thanks!

As someone ignorant about development and the African context, but enthusiastic about pursuing development for all the reasons you listed: My perception is that the bottlenecks are cultural, not economic. This might be a stupid question, but are corruption and kinship culture serious problems that might undermine your efforts where you are operating? 

Somewhat agreed - the psychological dimension is large across the whole world. I sort of gestured at it in my first post about the revealed preference for nature. Maybe I should have tried to estimate the combined value of premium housing near healthy ecosystems. (Hm, it would be conflated with "ocean views" and other aesthetic physical landscapes, and some of the value comes from being a positional good....) 

The typical scientific justification in the vein of psychological value mostly comes down to "greenery" which could be equally provided by unnatural and low biodiversity park walks. There are some other examples like birdsong, but it's still not evidence that biodiversity is important for our wellbeing. I admit I did a cursory check, but I feel pretty confident that it's not good justification for the sort of global biodiversity conservation that environmentalists (like myself) value.

That's wonderful to hear, wow. I'm surprised it provoked such a negative reaction but pleased that she enjoyed the second one!

Thank you for the words of support! So nice to hear from someone who doesn't empathize, aha. I'm delighted.

I hope to shed light... So that environmentalists see their own position clearly, with all the giant gaps that have been glossed over. I hope to demonstrate rigor to folks who think environmental positions are all just confused & wishful thinking. I hope people who care about nature feel seen, and want to get involved in building environmentalism with EA principles. I want EAs to see it's okay to care about nature and things that are meaningful to them, even if they aren't the most effective or the most universal.

And most of all, for my own sake, I want to interrogate myself and reflect the real world!

(I posted my next follow-up, and would be happy if you read it.)

I know what you mean! I am trying to provide a critical approach and would like to hear what you think of how it turned out.

Should forecasting receive more or less EA funding?

Mildly surprised how much is going into it. Mildly surprised how little is coming out of it. Still have high expectations for the return on improving decision-making. I'm a low information voter. Voting without factoring in a large increase in funds in the near future which would slam everything to the right.

I just came back from my first retreat and (due to unlucky events) had a pretty negative outcome. This gave me back some hope that there is something actually good out there for me yet. Thank you. Quality timing.

Total number is richness. 

Buncha pedantics: The problem with that is it's easy to add more "weedy" species to increase biodiversity per local area, even as you decrease global biodiversity. The real number is global extant species but we aren't perfectly coordinated to know what this specific place should do best relative to what everywhere else is doing. Aaand you can't totally re-establish density with reduced genetic diversity if it gets bad enough, but you are correct. Its the irreversible damage that is most concerning. 

Thanks for noticing that! I'll fix it.