TLDR: Take the population ethics quiz here: https://mdickens.me/pop-ethics/
Population ethics is an oft-overlooked subfield within ethics. Many people hold views that they don't realize contradict each other, or that have strange implications that they wouldn't endorse if they thought about it more.
Not just that—population ethics is a BIG DEAL. A lot of ethical decisions hinge on how you think about changes in future populations....
I’ve been feeling pretty shaken since the METR report about the Hugging Face incident came out last week. Over the weekend, I wrote up some thoughts on how lonely the AI situation sometimes feels to me. It’s more personal than what I’d usually share publicly, but I thought I’d post it here in case it resonates with anyone else.
I’m very grateful to the man...
TL;DR: Kairos has raised $50 million from Coefficient Giving for two years of funding, one of the largest commitments they’ve made towards AI safety fieldbuilding to date. We’re using this to make an ambitious push for growing Kairos, broadening our portfolio of talent infrastructure projects and incubating new organizations. We’ve doubled in size in the last six mon...
In addition to wreaking havoc with USAID, the rule of law, whatever little had been started in Washington about AI safety, etc., the US government has, as you all know, decided to go after trans people. I'm neither trans nor an American, but I think it's really not nice of them to do that, and I'd like to do something about it, if I can.
To some extent, of course, it's the inner deontologist within me speaking here: trans people are relatively few, arguably in less immediate danger than African children dying of AIDS, and the main reason why I feel an urge to do something is because explicitly wanting a certain group to be removed from society feels morally worse than letting them die just because you don't want to spend money on them.
But still: anyone has a good guess at what would be the most effective way for me to allocate a little bit of my time and money to this problem?