Epistemic status: Speculation from two decently informed advocates armed with anecdata.
Note on process: After having some version of this conversation several times and saying, “we should probably write about this publicly,” we took the less heroic route: we recorded one of our conversations, fed the transcript into an LLM, and then substantially revised the structure, substance, and framing ourselves. We will not be sharing the transcript, as it is in...
I want to start by noting that I am amazed and somewhat in awe of what's been accomplished by the EA animal welfare movement. I am enthusiastically supportive of all campaigns that make living and dying conditions less bad for farmed animals.
I worked on such campaigns for almost 20 years, and I'm proud of that work.
That said, I do think it's a strategic error that the EA animal movement has so thoroughly moved on from advocacy for animal liberation and diet change.&n...
The swarm has made me feel AI risk in my bones for the first time
Until the Hugging Face / OpenAI swarm thing, I think I deep down felt pretty skeptical that extinction or serious loss of control scenarios were plausible in the next few years.
I’ve been lurking on LessWrong for years, and I remember being freaked out by Yudkowsky’s ‘List of Lethalities’ in 2022, and thinking that this did seem intellectually convincing, and maybe I should do something about it. But it didn...
For American EAs who are LGBT/queer: I think we should begin having discussions about how the Trump administration will affect us (non-queer people would also be allowed to participate), and whether we want to leave or stay, as well as where we want to go to. I think there are factors to take into account (like impact, community, and career potential) that would be better for an EA-focused group to look at. It would also be nice to have a group that is shielded from the fearmongering of the general public.
I might make a larger post or start a Groupchat for this, so if you are or know anyone who would be interested, you can comment or message me about it and we can get in touch.(I need to get my life priorities in order, so I will not be doing this now.) Personally, I will not yet be leaving the United States, but I want to be ready to leave if things get dangerous enough. I wouldn't normally post something this politically divisive, but the possible urgency and threat posed to people needs to be assessed seriously.