All of Dušan D. Nešić (Dushan)'s Comments + Replies

Another thing I don't see here is the importance of being in the supply chain of AI products. Countries with compute clusters whose compute they export will gain as AI becomes more ubiquitous, countries that are next importers of AI services with no stake in the chain will be harder hit. Even if AI is not substituting labor, but is only necessary productivity boost to keep up with the productivity of other workers, you end up paying a fee from each worker of yours for AI (mostly to developed countries). This may not be a big deal if open source models rema... (read more)

Thank you for writing this up. I resonate with this a lot. I live in Serbia, work in AIS, and the pull to the Bay is incredibly high. No good solution, coming there 2-3x per year helps somewhat, but also just increases the feel of missing out - it seems as if I get months worth of "unstuck" every time I visit.
At the same time, one thing you did not mention, but that I think is underappreciated, is that family and not living in a hub are great for not burning out. I think being in a hub, being around EAs all the time, having your livelihood tied to EA - all of it makes it hard to stop working due to fear of losing literally everything in your life right now if you "fail".

I would like to see orgs trying to tackle Gradual Disempowerment productively, I am unsure what the work would look like, but it is definitely impactful, likely at least somewhat tractable.

Likely just after these events in August the Eastern Europe Unconference Retreat in Subotica! ;)

In PIBBSS, we've had a mentor note that for alignment to go well, we need more philosophers working on foundational issues in AI rather than more prosaic researchers. I found that interesting, and I currently believe that this is true. Even in short-timeline worlds, we need to figure out some philosophy FAST.

ACs are ubiquitous and our office has two, we're not like EU countries ;)

Sorry, was traveling and only saw this now (thanks Gergo)! Generally many places are visa free to us, and if you have Schengen, UK or US visa valid (and have actually traveled to those places at least once on that visa) you can come visa free to Serbia. Visa is also generally good to get, but embassies don't exist in all countries so sometimes you have to ship your passport (from Philippines to Indonesia for example), so do plan accordingly. Happy to help write an invitation letter, but more important for the visa is having booked accommodation, there's cheap hostels walking distance from the office, I'm happy to send links.

Yes! The main reason for a relatively detailed write up is because I think this model can be easily replicated and is very much not dependant on our region.

Thanks for your thoughts, Caleb! Yes, I come from 10 years in orgs where most retreats are self-funded, and we always had a good time - learning that in EA retreats are funded was a culture shock for me. For bigger conferences, I still think it is important to be able to give free tickets and even food and travel subsidies in part or full because diversity the of thought and inclusion of those who cannot afford it matters a lot. For something this small, where I expect we can recognize such cases, I think self-funded events are quite great.

Thank you for this amazing write up. I had suspected that interventions at the level of charity would not work, compared to interventions at the level of funders. If funders require effectiveness, charities will care - but except some very newly started orgs, I've felt that institutional inertia stops them from caring about the mission and instead they just Goodheart the things funders want or institution has focused on. This makes me update even more away from Local Priorities Research, and towards Contextualisation work even in countries where there must... (read more)

I am saying something like: If actual risk is reduced by a quantity A, but the perceived reduction is actually B, then it's worth spending time telling people the difference in cases where B>>A, else the effects of the project have been negative (like the effects of green-washing or more relevantly safety-washing). This is not about AI safety in general but for a particular intervention on a case by case basis.

A corollary of this might be "it is worthwhile to put effort into showing how little risk mitigation has actually been accomplished by the risk-reducing efforts" in order to minimize risk compensation.

Fantastic, I didn't know about this, I would have included it in the post! :D

There's something about the fact that having dissolved justice system in order to rule, dictators are often afraid of stepping down, since there's no legal process to protect them once they are no longer president. Thus, a credible island paradise where all countries in the world agree to send leaders who decide to peacefully retire would be a good EV; including good or mediocre rulers, so that there's no incentive to be extra bad. Maybe it brings in bad motivation to rule in the first place, but I am sure we could figure it out by next April 1st and turn it into a post :D

Yeah, ChatGPT - this is first response, few edits, and it was unusually full of zingers. Maybe the bullet points I used mentioning Eastern Europeans brought our sense of humor over to it.

Oh, another stellar contribution! I mean, if their reluctance to bribes generalizes to our adversaries, then that's some positive externallity; but the downside risk of adversaries getting to do all the "Bribin' " (as we call it in the biz) and us doing none is too high. Still, "if none of your prospects ended up in jail, your "funding" bar was too high", as the saying goes! Maybe we just do BribeWell, and simultaneously run a secret market for how much money we could get paid if we revealed our transactions, allowing us to "cash-out" when we see a high enough impact opportunity (bribing AGI for example).

New Alignment Agenda - Make AI Bribable.

I shamelessly admit that AI wrote all of those, leaving me in awe. I thought I'd need to write in some zingers, but honestly, it was just my job to get out of its way. There's a metaphor there somewhere...

Thank you, Jason, for so clearly showing all the advantages of our approach! Once we get funding from a mysterious benefactor in ~25 years, I'll reach out to you for our "Director of Explaining BribeWell" position!

Can't wait for the Numerology and Chinese Zodiac updates in the following years for ever more auspicious meetings! Perhaps the conference halls could have different positions of Feng-Shui to facilitate different topics?

I was doing alright until the Shrimp Welfare Project rebranding, that one got me well :D

Finally out, our 2023 retrospective! https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/izWpWJRoqXPLoqSv9/retrospective-pibbss-fellowship-2023 (Apologies, I don't know how to do links on mobile) I know it's too late for the ball, but my completionist mind needed to close this open question. This reflection does include research output, and even a bit of retrospective on what alumni from 2022 did.

Hi Nickolai! Sure thing; generally, the maximum stay of 90 days for other countries is limited to 90 days in 180 days. However,, for Russian and Chinese citizens, the limit is 30 days, but there is no limit to how many times this can be done. Thus, so long as you cross a border (for example by bus into Bosnia, which has the same rule and is 2 hours away from Belgrade) once a month, you can stay indefinitely (and I have known people who did so for ~7 years already). This allows you to work from here and have a bank account here, all without having to take o... (read more)

Thanks for the input Matheus - yes indeed, they create quite tight communities in really diverse places, lots to learn! I hope to post more about successes in cooperation once we have them :)

I find your focus on outer game strange. Given the already existing support of the public for going slowly and deliberately, there seems to be a decent case that instead of trying to build public support, we should directly target the policymakers. It's not clear what extra public support buys us here. In fact, I suspect it might be far more valuable to lobby the industry to try to reduce the amount of opposition such laws might receive.

These are not exclusive to each other, but complementary. Calling your local senator is only made stronger if the same se... (read more)

My understanding (non-expert) is that the inside game is whatever uses the system as is. Outside is things that try to break the system or put pressure in ways that the system generally does not legibly take as inputs. So, talking to existing officials to use existing ways of regulation is maximum inside game. Throwing a coup and enacting dictatorial powers in order to regulate is maximum outside game. Lobbying is more inside, and protesting is more outside. So when we say "target policymakers", the question is how? Are you sending polite emails with reasoned arguments, or are you throwing buckets of computer chips at their car as they drive by? (I do not endorse doing this, and I say this for comedic effect :D )

Thanks, Allison!

The commitment is actually not that huge - there are many clubs, and many of them are quite small, meaning that every year ~20% of members are board members, and people usually do not want to be board members multiple times, so even a year after joining you can make your way up with ambition and drive.

My hope is absolutely to aim for cause prioritization within Rotary - and Rotarians I spoke to are quite keen on the idea! No one likes being ineffective!

(Yes, that's often the case when incentives are poor - I think things would be different if you were given a budget and asked to create maximum impact with guidance from someone experienced, a la Charity Elections!)

Happy to hear that you find it useful!

Yes, my subjective feeling from talking to people at EAG London, ~<30% people knew of Rotary. That was surprising to me, so this post was pushed higher on my priorities list.

Just a quick comment to add to what Jacob said - my intuition is if I am currently using A, and B appears which seems the same, then I will not switch because I already know A and am used to A, and people I have personal relations with are selling me A etc... For me to switch, B must be much better; in this case, plant-based causes less suffering, but how much do people care about this, compared to signalling and such? Seems intuitive to me that to make the shift, additional campaigns need to be made to make this a clear-cut change, it will not happen 100% by default.

If I remember correctly, the application form says if you are an individual then choosing to be anonymous is not held against you. If you are an org asking for anonymous donation then it is slightly held against you in the decision making process.

I can imagine there could be grants for orgs to work on infohazardous things which would need to be anonymized, and I am unsure how to handle these. Still, overall it seems like these are mostly small-ish grants to individuals, so I am OK with it, and as you said, the bigger the grant the higher the burden I would put on the org to not be anonymous. To be clear, I assume that's what LTFF does anyway.

I would expect that most of those 52 are individuals who don't want their incomes/research made searchable by Google.

Thanks for the lovely words Kat, happy to hear you had a great time! Next time you're around, ping EA Serbia, we make for great guides :) As for why Serbia, visa policy is really the main considerations - Budapest, Prague and Lisbon are all equally unattainable to many weaker passport holders (something often underappreciated as our movement is mostly from the West). Serbia has the unique advantage of being visa free (sometimes for unlimited time!) for the west and many countries in the east.

(there could be many reasons why this is the case - people at EAG have a high opportunity cost of attending office hours as there are always other lectures and 1-on-1s happening; also, it takes a certain level of affluence to attend an EAG - any that I would want to attend requires me to go through a one-to-two month visa process during which my passport is not with me, and which costs up to 50% of average salary in my country, not counting the airplane tickets and housing in some of the most expensive cities in the world where EAGs happen)

For extra credit... (read more)

Hi Michael, unfortunately it is late where I am so the clarity of my comment may suffer, but I feel like if I do not answer now I may forget later, so with perfect being the enemy of the good, I hope to produce good enough intuition pump for my disagreements:

1. An example of a market where the buyer buys for others is the healthcare market, where insurances, hospitals, doctors, and patients all exist, patients buy insurances, insurances pay hospitals, which pay doctors (in the US doctors may work as small sole-traders within the hospital like a shop in a mall

EA Mental Health Navigator works like this - you recommend people you worked with, anyone can add people on the list, and it's "open source" so funders don't get some special say. I think the author of this post has a running list of Service providers like that, so that'll fix it too.

Perhaps the feeling of achievement gained from cookie-clicker games, such as FarmVille and such, that have taken over all the old and young people's temporary attention? Gambling in Gatcha or Online Gambling? Opioids epidemic?

If you, the person reading this, are interested in helping with AI safety but do not have a technical background in AI Safety and instead have it in complex sciences (evolutionary biology, sociology, economics, law, neurology...) do reach out to us at PIBBSS.ai . You will be late for this year's applications, but we may have other ways of cooperating, or we can put you on the list to be the first one to find out when we have new programs by signing up to our mailing list.

The penultimate link shows the retrospective on the last year. Mostly fellows are still working on publishable results, and without their permission we do not want to share what they worked on in specifics beyond what is in the retrospective. We are hoping in the long term to have a page on our website showing all the published works of our Alumni that started during PIBBSS.

PIBBSS Fellowship 2023 is officially open!

Application deadline: Sunday, Feb 5th, 2023

Learn more and apply here.

Information sessions: 1st information session, 28th of January, 17:00 UTC (09:00 PST, 12:00 EST, 18:00 CET, 01:00 [29th of Jan] Singapore) Zoom Link

2nd information session, 29th of January, 11:00 UTC (03:00 PST, 06:00 EST, 12:00 CET, 19:00 Singapore) Zoom Link

Hello Yi-Yang, thank you for this fantastic write-up. I am considering doing such research and motivating other Eastern Europe countries to do the same, and this was highly valuable. The reason why I want to do this, and one not mentioned here is:
Many charities and individuals are limited in who they can donate to, usually geographically. For example taxpayers in a country may only be able to donate their tax-deduction money to NGOs that help people in that country (I know that in China even stricter rule applies, that all fundraising in China can only go ... (read more)

"All" feels like too strong of a claim, but I could agree with a weaker version of this.

Apologies for the late reply. To use an analogy: anyone can make a burger better than Mcdonalds', but hardly anyone can make an organization as successful. If you could for example organize international trade, steel mining or such while avoiding corporations, I would be indeed impressed. In the reality that we live in, this is the only way to conduct business.

Thank you for the great work - I wonder which other fields might benefit from the same treatment (all of them?).

One note: you mark "built environment" as low downside risk. Is this true? I'd assume that a constant low-level exposure to pathogens is what builds up our immune systems (perhaps why allergies and asthma levels are rising is our increasingly disinfected environments?) so I'd assume that built environments (which I presume mean those with controlled air-flow and sealed from the outside) actually do carry possible significant downside risks throug... (read more)

I am speaking from my opinion and the conversations I had face-to-face with EA's in different situations but this seems broadly true:

• Corporations are a necessary evil: generally much of the harm that is imposed on animals for example comes from monopolies, MNCs and such; tax evasion and exploitation of labor is conducted by the largest companies; Biorisk and AI risk comes from corporations as well as governments. There is however no other way to conduct business, and they bring about benefits such as technological development.

I wonder if that may be what A... (read more)