All of andrewpei's Comments + Replies

My guess is that the letter is largely a bluff. I don’t think these people want to work for Microsoft. I’m surprised Altman decided that was his best move vs starting his own company. Perhaps this implies that starting from scratch is not as easy as we think. Microsoft has the license to most (all?) of OpenAIs tech so they would be able to hit the ground running.

Twitter is full of people laying into EA for being behind Sam Altman's firing. However, if it's true that this happened because the board thought Altman was trying to take the company in an 'unsafe' direction then I'm glad they did this. And I'm glad that for the time being considerations other than 'shareholder value' are not the defining motivation behind AI development.

This is incredibly short-sighted. The board’s behavior was grossly unprofessional and the accompanying blog post was borderline defamatory. And Altman is one of the most highly-connected and competent people in the Bay Area tech scene. Altman can easily start another AI company; in fact, media outlets are now reporting that he's considering doing just that, or might even return to OpenAI by pressuring the board to resign. 

In fact, Manifold is at 50% that Altman will return as CEO, and at 38% that he'll start another AI company. It seems that the board... (read more)

Hi Ozzie,  while I agree it's true that there aren't many high-performing organizations which use democratic decision making. I believe Bridgwater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, does use such a system. They use a tool called the dot collector to gather real time input from a wide base of employees and use that to come up with a 'believability weighted majority'. The founder of the company Ray Dalio has said that he will generally defer to this vote even when he himself does not agree with the result.  https://www.principles.com/... (read more)

We know now that Sam is a pathological liar which makes it hard to take anything he says (including this interview) at face value. He's facing serious jail time for this mess and has a strong incentive to present himself/FTX as incompetent vs deliberate frauds. I'm pretty skeptical of his claim that they just 'happened' to make a sequence of decisions which were above board in isolation but added up to gambling with FTX customer deposits

I agree that EA likely wasn't a major causal factor for FTX/SBF's likely fraud. Unfortunately, it's a situation where even if it's not our fault it is our problem. People are trashing EA across the internet because of Sam's position in the movement. His Twitter profile pic still has him wearing an EA shirt for christ sake! 

So are people who never attacked EA before suddenly doing so? That isn't what I've seen. I've seen lots of bad-faith takes about how this is proof of what they always thought, and news reporting which is about as accurate as you'd expect - that is, barely correct on the knowable facts, and misleading or confused about anything more complicated than that.

Just did a workshop run by Max at Stanford and had a great time. Would really recommend this!

Interesting ideas and post! First a critique. It didn't sound right that we should wait 50 years for improved governance. Governance isn't something that just improves on its own over time, it's not a force of nature. It manifests and changes in response to human needs. The aftermath of WW1 brought the League of Nations, WW2 brought on the UN and EU, the Cold War created NATO. If anything it seems that changes to governance happen AFTER a need arises, not preemptively. I know we all wish that weren't the case but it is what is.

The deve... (read more)

8[anonymous]5y
Hello, I'm not completely sure I follow why your first paragraph is a critique. I don't expect governance to improve on its own. My claim is that we do not need 50 years of governance research to get governance to a sufficiently good level should we need to deploy solar geoengineering in the future. The hope is that we will be wise enough not to have to use it because we will start serious mitigation, and I'm worried that geoengineering research could be one of many factors that could derail those efforts. It is true that developing geoengineering technology would create incentives to improve governance mechanisms for geoengineering. I'm not sure why that is a critique of my argument. I agree that war is unlikely for the reasons you outline.

Great post. I totally agree with the framing of meritocratic vs inclusive orgs and their inherent tension. It may be an awkward analogy but EA is more or less a modern religion and religion has already figured out how to navigate this dynamic.

Basically you have churches as the inclusive geographic community center where believers come on a regular basis. There's a sermon to reaffirm and bring perspective to their faith/ideology. There's art in multiple forms such as music, sculpture to connect at an emotional level. There's rituals to lend ... (read more)

Fantastic report! I love this type of content and can't wait to sink my teeth into it

Any follow up here on qualitative reasons why women are less likely to return to EA events?

3
Kirsten
5y
I have the follow-up sitting on my computer at home, but for personal reasons I am unable to actually go home and upload it, so it might be another couple of months before I can share it.

Nice ideas here Sebastian. I wanted to clarify what you mean by professional core groups, the example you gave of EA London's finance community sounds like a professional group within a local group. In my view the current challenge is that many cities don't even have community groups at all much less the ability to subdivide based on profession.

I think it makes sense for EA to build community both along the lines of geography but also in professions (without respect to geography) e.g. EA's in Healthcare. Of these two I think the priority sh... (read more)

1
Sebastian_Oehm
5y
Hey, I'm thinking of professional 'groups' or strong networks without respect to geography, though I would guess that some professions will cluster around certain geographies. E.g. in finance you'd expect EAs to be mainly in London, Frankfurt, New York etc. And it would be preferable for members to be in as few locations as possible. I agree that local groups are very important, and plausibly more important, than professional groups. However, local groups work largely by getting members more involved in the community and providing 'push' factors to go into EA careers. I think the next frontier of community building will be to add these 'pull' factors. We have made a lot of progress on the local groups side, now it is time to think about the next challenge. Re professional community builders: this is already happening & good. But they are largely working on getting members more engaged, rather than building strong professional 'core' communities (though some people do work in this direction, it is not a main focus). I suspect the driving force will be volunteers at the start, similar to how student groups got started initially. These would be people that are already well-connected and have some experience in their field. This would also get around the issue that EA orgs may currently not have resources for such projects. I doubt funding will be an issue hif the volunteers meet these properties.

I love all the self-reflection that has been happened in EA recently regarding what should everyone be doing. I agree that earning to give shouldn't be the person's primary involvement in EA.

I think EA needs to further develop cause areas to encompass wider domains e.g. as a resident in SF I want to know what are the most effective causes and solutions for the USA, for California, and for my city. I think having these domains will both grow the tent of people in EA and also opportunities to contribute. Things like global catastrophic risk is probably always going to be a niche field for direct work.

Such a structure would also form a natural hierarchy from localized issues -> universal issues.