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?
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.
TLDR: PIBBSS has room for funding for additional research affiliates! We can support additional affiliates at 35k USD per individual for 6 months.
PIBBSS is a research initiative aiming to leverage insights on the parallels between intelligent behaviour in natural and artificial systems towards progress on making AI systems safe and aligned. We run a number of programs (e.g. summer fellowship, affiliate program, reading group, speaker series) aimed at facilitating this type of research, identifying and leveraging high caliber talent, and building...
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...
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...
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 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
It's true that we get some applications that ask for privacy on infohazard grounds, and I think it's very important that at least some longtermist/x-risk fund is willing to cover them without demanding public reports. But I think they're very much in the minority of anonymous applications we receive or grants we give out, so if donors broadly don't want us to make anonymous grants, I don't want to hide behind infohazards as an excuse.
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...
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:
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 ...
A stronger, more deliberate push (backed by funding) should be made to enter professional places (by opening professional groups) and attract mid-to-late-stage professionals from diverse industries, as well as people in countries where EA has no presence. A lesser imperative should be placed on university groups.
More outside expertise should be welcomed. All roles in EA organizations should be advertised on open platforms like LinkedIn, and while selecting based on "culture fit" is allowed, people without previous EA exposure should not be disqualified outright.
There should be a separate body to represent communities which is a combination of elected and randomly assigned members. Its purpose is to have a check on the un-elected experts in other organizations while being kept in check by them in turn.
Many EA organizations currently make decisions based on a western-centric (for lack of a better word) mindset, accidentally silencing voices coming from outside. More EAGs/job opportunities should be held outside of USA/UK/EU since third-world countries have a hard time getting a Visa for developed countries.
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...
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:
I wonder if that may be what A...
Thank you very much for writing this - I have found it incredibly useful and wish all complex philosophical texts would be followed by something like this. Just wanted to give you extra feel-good for doing this because it is well deserved as it helped me immensely to fit all that I read into place.
Thank you Geoffrey for an insightful contribution!
Regarding B - The project PIBBSS has done over the last fellowship (disclosure I now work there as Ops Director) has exactly this goal in mind, and we are keen to connect to non-AI researchers interested in doing AI safety research by utilizing their diverse professions. Do point them our way and tell them that the interdisciplinary field is in development. The fellowship is not open yet, and we are considering how to go forward, but there will likely be speaker series that would be relevant to these people.
Hello Ben, good to see such a passionate approach to education in EA. It seems like we are in similar positions in our careers (I have about 7 years of teaching at the University, 9 in High School, and 5 in management of teachers, with one school launch under my belt, that unfortunately due to COVID 19 did not pan out) and I have for the past four months been working with Heye Gross on an EA-university, starting from doing reaserch into progress studies and how we can get academics to be more productive, before trying to teach. If you wish to bounce ideas,...
Are there any Rotary Club, Lions Club, or similar (Freemasons, and other clubs also welcome) members who would be interested to network? I wish to start an informal group for making those clubs more effective.
For the age, it depends - Lions Cubs are younger than EAs, and some of these clubs take great care to attract young talent, although I'd agree that the most powerful and influential parts of these orgs are older. Perhaps that is to some extent true in EA too?
As for the prongs, I agree. I am hoping soon to finish the next article, but alas private life does not allow it, but eventually there will be more investigations into this, furthering 1. For 2., I agree, for some organizations such as Happier Lives Institute for example, it's a spot-on match in fact.
Thanks for another well thought out response!
perhaps in the cases where you would be 'selling' your solutions to 'suspecting' orgs, but here you would be just entertaining their thinking and the solutions would be actually theirs (EA does not already have solutions, it would have advanced them)
I am actually not sure about this. In my experience, coming and saying "here, have some money, media exposure, and more attendees to your event in exchange for just putting a logo on the banner with no mandate on mentioning anything or changing anything, just keep do...
Hello Bara, thank you for your comprehensive thoughts. Let me try to answer them piece by piece.
- I agree that EA should have something appealing for some of these established organizations with extensive networks. What is already available is funding/grants (e. g. for low marginal cost high impact additions, such as these ones). What is quite available is statistical evaluation expertise and tech help (people who study or work in these fields looking for opportunities). What is less available is cost-effective solutions brainstorming skills (some EAs can ...
I am extremely keen to go, but due to my passport it takes over a month to acquire a visa. I would have definitely applied if there were two weeks more of a heads-up, especially as I have some musings that I am interested to mull over with peer professors. Please when organizing the next one, do give a bit more of an advanced notice, for those of us with weaker passports.
Location: Belgrade, Serbia
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: To some countries in EU in the mid-term
Skills: Community Building, Operations, Consulting, Education, Leadership - all of these in cross-cultural contexts
Résumé/CV/LinkedIn: nesicdusan.com is my LinkedIn, but also see my profile here
Email: work (-at-) dnesic.com
Notes: Part-time or full-time work is interesting to me, especially within cause areas concerning AI, Global Poverty and Inequality, and Education reform or Policy. I offer one free consulting session to EA firms that can benefit from my skillset.
I think I broadly agree. It would also help with attracting actual professionals. The "bar to entry" decision is talking price, but I am generally interested in it. The thing we lose is the ability to say is "Well, that person wasn't REALLY EA" but the thing we gain is the ability to say is "Well, that person was kicked out of EA/never joined" or something like that when talking about a bad actor who has not acted in an EA way but has connections to the community. I don't think that should be our main consideration, but it is worthwhile to know that the le... (read more)