It's not as much a pivot as a codification of what has been long true. 

"EA is (experientially) about AI" has been sorta true for a long time. Money and resources do go to other causes. But the most influential and engaged people have always been focused on AI. EA institutions have long systematically emphasized AI. For example many editions of the EA handbook spend a huge fraction of their introductions to other cause areas effectively arguing why you should work on AI instead. CEA staffers very heavily favor AI. This all pushes things very hard in one direction. 

I strongly prefer the blatant honestly of the 80k announcement. Much easier to think about. And much easier for young people to make informed opinions. 

I think its better to start something new. Reform is hard but no one is going to stop you from making a new charity. The EA brand isn't in the best shape. Imo the "new thing" can take money from individual EAs but shouldn't accept anything connected to OpenPhil/CEA/Dustin/etc. 

If you start new you can start with a better culture. 

I spent all day in tears when I read the congressional report. This is a nightmare. I was literally hoping to wake up from a bad dream.

I really hope people don't suffer for our sins.

How could we have done something so terrible. Starting an arms race and making literal war more likely.

I spent all day crying about this. An arms race is about the least safe way to approach. And we contributed to this. Many important people read Leopold's report. He promoted it quite hard. But the background work predates Leopold's involvement.

We were totally careless and self aggrandizing. I hope other people don't pay for our sins.

Criticism of who? If anything EAs have been far too trusting of their actual leaders. Conversely they have been far too critical of people like Holly. Its not a simple matter of some parameter being too high.

Holden is married to Dario Amodei's sister. Dario is a founder of Anthropic. Holden was a major driver of EA AI policy.

Dustin is a literal billionaire who, along with his wife, has control over almost all EA institutions. Being critical of Dustin, while at all relying on EA funding or support, is certainly brave. Open Phil is known to be quite capricious. If anything the EA comunity was far too trusting of its leaders and funders. Dustin has tons of ties, including financial, to the AI industry. 

These serious conflicts explain a lot of why EA took such a strange approach to AI policy. 

However criticizing random EAs who are trying to do a good job is completely demotivating. There needs to be some sense of proportionality. I remember being asked about the potential downsides of my project when I applied to future fund. There were concerns about what, to me, seemed extremely unlikely outcomes. It is very funny looking back given that FTX was, at that time, running a gigantic fraud. Criticism of the locally powerful is undersupplied. Criticism of random people is very oversupplied. 

Why do you need to justify something to yourself? You can do whatever you want. 

I'm quite leftwing by manifest standards. I'm probably extremely pro-woke even by EA standards. I had a great time at less-online/summer-camp/manifest. I honestly tried to avoid politics. Unlike many people I don't actually like arguing. I'd prefer to collaborate and learn from other people. (Though I feel somewhat 'responsible for' and 'invested in' EA and so I find it hard not to argue about that particular topic). I mostly tried to talk to people about finance, health and prediction markets. Was honestly super fun and easy. People didn't force me to discuss poltiics. 

 Though I must say it was probably a mistake to bring my girlfriend to manifest. I think she got freaked out. Probably wasn't good for our relationship. 

Emile seems to donate quite a bit: 

"I’m passionate about alleviating global poverty, and have pledged to give away everything I earn over $40,000 a year. In December 2022, I started a fundraiser with Nathan Young, an Effective Altruist, that raised more than $321,000 for the charity Give Directly." -- https://www.xriskology.com/

I'm also quite critical of EA and have donated more than most EAs (both in absolute and percentage terms). 

Even annoying critics may be quite sincere.

I donated a lot. Both in absolute and percentage terms. I gave a percentage many times higher than even most well off EAs. I think it would have been selfish to just keep the money. But I don't have any particularly great feelings about how I donated. 'Things are complicated' can be an applause light. Sometimes things aren't all that complicated. But this topic sure is. Saying 'those who criticize the movement as a whole are deeply intellectually unserious' just seems unserious to me. The movement has a lot of structural problems. Both 'extremely positive' and 'extremely negative' impacts seem very plausible to me. Probability is distributed over a very wide range. 

Im not sure what normal community members can really do. Decision making is incredibly centralized. But surely we have some responsibility to be serious about downsides. The existence of annoying critics does not absolve us. Though we also have a responsibility not to be overly negative. Or maybe the real answer is we dont have much of either responsibility since two people have almost all the power. But this suggests maybe we should take our talents elsewhere.