MN

Minh Nguyen

Platform Development Intern @ Nonlinear
773 karmaJoined Jul 2022Pursuing an undergraduate degreeSingapore
linktr.ee/menhguin

Bio

Participation
5

I proposed the Nonlinear Emergency Fund and  Superlinear as Nonlinear Intern.[1]

I co-founded Singapore's Fridays For Future (featured on Al Jazeera and BBC). After arrests + 1 year of campaigning, Singapore adopted all our demands (Net Zero 2050, $80 Carbon Tax and fossil fuel divestment).

I developed a student forum with >300k active users and a study site with >25k users. I founded an education reform campaign with the Singapore Ministry of Education.

  1. ^

    I proposed both ideas at the same time as the Nonlinear team, so we worked on these together.

How others can help me

Plans I'm planning:

  1. FridaysForFuture for AI Safety/ AIS advocacy (!!!)
  2. An AI Generated Content (AIGC) policy consultancy
  3. A scaleable EA Model UN framework 
  4. Creating video content on EA/longtermism/x-risk
  5. EA digital marketing/outreach/SEO funnels
  6. Tools for EA job searching and AI Safety research
  • + An EA Common Application, an AIS standardised test,  etc.

And probably more. See: linktr.ee/menhguin

How I can help others

If it helps others, I will help you build it.[1]

  1. ^

    OK, assuming I'm not completely swamped with work. I'll definitely give input tho.

Posts
2

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Comments
82

In AI Safety, it seems easy to feel alienated and demoralised.

The stakes feel vaguely existential, most normal people have no opinion on it, and it never quite feels like "saving a life". Donating to global health or animal welfare feel more direct, if still distant.

I would imagine a young software developer discovers EA, and then AI Safety, hoping to do something meaningful. But the moments after that, feel much the same as it would a normal job.

Curious if others feel the same.

I've found not many people bother to play arbitrage with prosocial outcomes.

You essentially need someone to care about prosocial outcomes, be very quantitative and strigent with calculations vs just going by concensus, and be sufficiently motivated to make life changes. In a way, being agreeable to care about others while being disagreeable enough to go against social concensus and gut feel.

Early adopters get to play a lot of arbitrage.

Suggestion for EAGs/EAGx:

Please give more detail on your Swapcard about your research/projects. Even just the title of the research paper, or any links.

I always review the entire attendee list. I actively want to meet people, but if someone just puts "I am trying to get into AI alignment research", I literally have nothing to go off, and can't think of a reason to reach out with so few details.

This also saves time during 1-on-1s so you don't re-introduce yourself/areas of interest every 30 minutes.

If you don't have a project/experience, you can even put ideas you're fascinated by, or groups you identify with. I literally Ctrl+F "ADHD", "startup", "Singapore" and other keywords related to my research interests.

I mean, the fact that I've dealt with a few similar agreements with similar/bigger platforms, and I myself manage a bigger platform than Deck's, and am managing my own partnership deal, similar to Deck's.

From my perspective, the events described really aren't that weird. Like, at all. It's very strange to me that the Deck story keeps coming up like some sort of smoking gun, when there seems to be nothing unusual about it in the social media marketing space.

The deal itself is normal.

The fact that Deck became inactive afterwards is unfortunate, but normal.

The fact that Deck and his parent sued doesn't really imply anything about Emerson's character. A teenager lost interest in an online venture, comes back to demand money when the venture made money. It happens all the time.

At least to me, it's really weird that everyone keeps talking about it like some strong red flag.

Again, not a lawyer so I'm willing to accept I'm wrong.

I think this very much depends on how "services requested by the company" is interpreted.

"render internet related services as requested by the Company from time to time

Failure by the Contractor to meet deadlines for performance of
services or failing to meet the standards required by the Company in the
performing of services

You could argue that access is what's requested, yes. Personally, I don't, because access by default is already assumed under a later clause that uses a different wording: "The Contractor agrees not to change any passwords for any Company-related projects without the consent of the Company"

Or you could argue that if Emerson reasonably demands active posting, he is entitled to it under the terms of the contract, and entitled to terminate the contract if this is not fulfilled. We could argue over what constitutes reasonable demands, but I would think it's more than "almost nothing".

Not specifying the exact timings didn't stand out to me. In my experience, it's not very common to specify exact posting schedules for a long-term brand partnership with a teenager. There's a certain expectation that teenage influencers are a little bit inconsistent.

In any case, my point with this whole thread is that ... the whole Deck thing is really not that much of a red flag? A fairly standard contract was signed with a minor and his parent, who tried to sue by invalidating the entire validity of a contract with a minor+guardian, and it seems Deck wasn't actively involved the whole time. 

I'm not seeing obvious predatory behaviour here. Maybe poorly defined contract terms, but I really don't see why people keep bringing this up a decade later as evidence against Emerson's character. Keep in mind, we haven't seen how many such contracts Spartz Inc signed without any incident.

If this is the absolute worst example an investigation could dig up from Emerson's 2-decade-long career, it just doesn't seem very convincing, ya know?

Hi! Sorry for the late response, I was actually handling my own contract for a partnership with a Generative AI startup to co-develop and deploy AI character voice chat onto our platforms w ~ 1 million users. Hopefully, history does not repeat itself.

There are the exact terms I'd found here (Sharing Information About Nonlinear) via Wayback Machine (archive.org).

The relevant parts:

The very first line under "Responsibilities of contractor":
> The Contractor shall render internet related services as requested by the Company from time to time

> The Contractor agrees not to engage in any behavior that would cause hardship to the Company, such as instances of sabotage. The Contractor agrees not to change any passwords for any Company-related projects without the consent of the Company. Should the Contractor breach this Agreement, the Contractor will, at the Company's edict, be required to rectify the breach, including but not limited to forfeiture of revenues and a requirement to reveal to the Company the current password of the OMG Facts Twitter account

> This Agreement shall commence on the “Effective Date” defined above and shall terminate one year thereafter, provided, however, that the Company may extend this Agreement for ten additional periods of one year each upon notice to Contractor given at least thirty days prior to the expiration initial expiration date or extended term. However, either party may terminate this contract in writing in the following instances:
(1) If either party is convicted of a criminal offense.
(2) Failure by the Contractor to meet deadlines for performance of
services or failing to meet the standards required by the Company in the
performing of services

Obviously, I am not a lawyer, but there's indeed several key clauses in there mentioning an obligation to actively perform services, which in the case of OMGFacts would essentially mean making Twitter posts. I don't think there's anything there that's particularly "predatory"?.

Regarding whether Deck performed this responsibility:[1]
> Here is the untold side of the story: The @OMGFacts Twitter (and Website/YouTube) is produced by us, not him. Adorian has done almost nothing for the past 15 months.  Almost every fact you have read from OMG Facts was researched, written, and edited by us.

I will note that I couldn't find any examples of Deck disputing that he was inactive. Deck's lawyer instead argued that contracts signed by Deck himself were invalid even if co-signed by his guardians.

Again, I'm not a lawyer, but if Emerson's main argument was that Deck didn't uphold his responsibility, you'd think the easiest rebuttal would be that ... he did things as per the contract. Instead of arguing that Deck signed the contract without knowing what he was doing:[2]

Deck's complaint contends that the contract he signed with Spartz was predatory and designed to dupe the teen into turning over his rights to the OMG Facts trademark without realizing what he was doing. Deck's attorney, Glenn Peterson of Roseville, argues that the intellectual property issues are moot in any case because California law allows individuals to disavow any contracts signed when they were minors.
Spartz counters that Deck's mother co-signed the contract as his legal guardian, and that Deck is simply hoping to exploit Spartz Inc.'s hard work for a quick gain.

So even just using public sources, we can establish that there were multiple clauses referencing an obligation to actively post, that Emerson claims Deck did not fulfil this, and Deck never even attempts to deny this, instead trying to invalidate the contract altogether. I don't see a particularly strong reason to "side with Deck" on this one, unless there's any claims/evidence that he did perform his responsibility that he hasn't publicly disclosed for 15 years.

  1. ^
  2. ^

I'm not going to lie, I disagreed with a lot of this, especially the conclusion. I don't quite have the time to respond to all of it, but I'll address Adorian Deck.

Deck sued for more money. Emerson knew that Deck’s dream was to become a YouTuber, so he threatened to get two top YouTubers to create videos slamming Deck. In response, Deck settled in what Emerson characterizes as “a deal he was satisfied with that gave him significant financial freedom.”

Here's the timeline as I understand it (it's been a while):
1. Deck builds a big social media account.

2. Emerson approaches Deck, offering to buy the brand and profit-share, under certain stipulations, including that he continue actively posting.

3. Deck no longer actively posts, essentially ending the contract terms and releasing Emerson's obligation to pay him.

To me, this seems pretty fair and standard? It doesn't seem particularly different from a brand acquisition or an influencer marketing program. Lots of founders get acquired and compensated with the stipulation that they keep performing their work under the new entity. Emerson is paying Deck to make posts in his own style. The alternative is to hire someone else to do it, and that's not ideal if you want to preserve the appeal of the original. 

But the OMGFacts brand itself was valuable: that’s why Emerson bought it instead of starting a competing YayFacts Twitter account. Emerson probably paid more to the lawyer who negotiated the contract than he did to Deck—the person who created the brand in the first place.

Social media brands that don't post have no value.

And, in my experience managing platforms and accounts much bigger than Deck's, brands are a multiplier, but have very little value on their own. The average person follows hundreds of accounts on multiple platforms. If a Fun Facts account isn't posting for a year, no one's gonna notice, and their posts won't show up because their followers' feed will be occupied by accounts that do post regularly.

A California law invalidates any contract with a minor that isn’t overseen by a judge—a crucial protection for child actors, who are often exploited by their parents. Emerson characterizes this law as a “bizarre loophole,” which strikes me as a very cavalier attitude towards children’s labor protections.

I mean, sorta? But of the entire influencer ecosystem, many are teenagers and very few have had their brand deals overseen by a judge. I doubt Mr Beast's first sponsor check was overseen by a judge. You're technically correct, but in practice it would be quite the demanding ask to have a judge oversee every contract with a minor influencer.

Thank you for this! This is 1 less misconception to deal with.

I always get suspicious when someone treats societal issues like a zero-sum game. Yes, we can worry about more than 1 thing at a time, and it' often not very productive to frame caring about things as oppositional to caring about another thing 

How do we prevent the methodology of exclusively seeking and publishing negative information, without fact checking, from becoming an acceptable norm?

Re: Checking that claims are true

Adding on as former Nonlinear intern who was aware of a “falling out” between Alice and Nonlinear for almost a year now:

  1. To my knowledge, Nonlinear was given very few/practically no opportunities to respond to the many claims made in “Sharing Information About Nonlinear” before they were posted, despite repeatedly communicating for several months that this counter-evidence was available to Ben and some CEA employees.
  2. I understand that the power asymmetry, high-trust environment and ethical standards within EA makes this complicated to resolve. However, my issue is that the vast majority of the claims made were easily verifiable/falsifiable. Things like payment/lack of payment, delivery orders, messages, receipts, who stayed where etc. all have paper trails. If it's so trivially easy to verify, there is a responsibility to verify!

I’m not against Ben and Alice choosing to post this. I believe we should normalise people exercising their option to speak out publicly. The alternative is being silenced by massive power asymmetry.

What I am against, is the way these allegations were made, which did not prioritise verifying allegations/claims when repeatedly presented with significant, factual counter-evidence.

Why was Nonlinear not given some chance to present counterevidence? It’s clear the initial investigation took months to gather; only a few days (two days, I think) before posting were Kat and Emerson presented with this, after reaching out to Ben several times! Even granting Nonlinear a day to submit an official refutation of the top 5-10 claims for review would have made a difference.[1] And that’s before factoring in the asymmetry required to refute these allegations with evidence vs making the initial allegations.

I think the handling of this community issue was not healthy for EA/longtermism. Fewer people will read this post than the initial allegations, and Nonlinear’s reputation has definitely been harmed. At best, future whistleblowers are less likely to be believed. I don’t see this as a win for anyone.

Personal Story: How unverified allegations cause harm to real people

Throughout this discussion, there was this undertone that over-weighting Alice’s claims justified the increased reputational risk to Nonlinear, because Kat and Emerson are “better-off” than Alice, so harming them is a more “acceptable” risk because Kat and Emerson will still do fine, whereas Alice is new and less established in EA.

I’d like to say that these allegations don’t just affect Emerson and Kat. It affects the many independent AI Safety researchers Nonlinear helps fund.[2] It also affects Nonlinear’s other employees. It has personally affected me. I am from Southeast Asia, where it’s much harder to find work in EA/longtermism than in EA hubs. Nonlinear was the first (and currently only) EA org I’ve interned at.

Nonlinear had formally stopped hiring interns when I applied, due to the incidents mentioned above. I contributed to the Superlinear bounty platform as a remote volunteer, without knowing it was owned by Nonlinear, or what Nonlinear was. I had spent so much time trying to contribute to EA part-time, that I wanted to make the experience easier for others.

When I was hired as an intern, I texted my friend “What’s Nonlinear? Are they … like, a big deal?”. My friend explained that having Nonlinear as a reference would help me gain admission to EA conferences, and be taken seriously for EA job applications.

Now that Nonlinear’s reputation within EA has been seriously harmed, I’ve been very concerned about how this affects my ability to contribute within EA. Should I add Nonlinear/Kat as references and risk very negative associations, or omit them and risk being overlooked in favour of other applicants who do have references from prominent EAs? It means a lot to me because, as a non-US/EU/UK citizen, I know I’m always applying at a significant disadvantage.[3] I will always have fewer opportunities than an EA born in London who goes to a prestigious UK college with an active EA chapter and many EA internship options, who doesn’t have additional Visa requirements. And if I get rejected for a role, I often don’t get to know why.

I didn’t mention this before, because I cared about whether Alice was actually abused. I had a hunch they were making false claims, but I didn’t want to invalidate victims who might be telling the truth. As of now, this seems … less likely.

These allegations do cause harm: to me, to other Nonlinear employees trying to contribute to EA and the people Nonlinear helps through our work.

In the future, please verify these more seriously. Thank you.

  1. ^

    The first time I asked Nonlinear about the allegations, it took me maybe 5-10 minutes to figure out there were multiple misleading statements, since I was shown message logs.

  2. ^

     In fundraising, reputation matters. Serious, public allegations of abuse means funders are (rightfully) hesitant, and less funding goes to researchers.

  3. ^

     If you are reading this and trying to get into AI Safety/longtermism from a non EA hub, do reach out and I’ll try to reply when I can! We gotta support each other >:)

a very minor and inconsequential point:

I initially read this as "Philosophers Against Malaria Fundraisers" and thought it was gonna be an interesting essay about how AMF fundraisers are bad, actually.

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