I'm a doctor working towards the dream that every human will have access to high quality healthcare. I'm a medic and director of OneDay Health, which has launched 53 simple but comprehensive nurse-led health centers in remote rural Ugandan Villages. A huge thanks to the EA Cambridge student community in 2018 for helping me realise that I could do more good by focusing on providing healthcare in remote places.
Thanks for the update, and the reasons for the name change make s lot of sense
Instinctively i don't love the new name. The word "coefficient" sounds mathsy/nerdy/complicated, while most people don't know what the word coefficient actually means. The reasoning behind the name does resonate through and i can understand the appeal.
But my instincts are probably wrong though if you've been working with an agency and the team likes it too.
All the best for the future Coefficient Giving!
Thanks @mal_graham🔸 this is super helpful and makes more sense now. I think it would make your argument far more complete if you put something like your third and fourth paragraphs here in your main article.
And no I'm personally not worried about interventions being ecologically inert.
As a side note its interesting that you aren't putting much effort into making interventions happen yet - my loose advice would be to get started trying some things. I get that you're trying to build a field, but to have real-world proof of this tractability it might be better to try something sooner rather than later? Otherwise it will remain theory. I'm not too fussed about arguing whether an intervention will be difficult or not - in general I think we are likely to underestimate how difficult an intervention might be.
Show me a couple of relatively easy wins (even small-ish ones) an I'll be right on board :).
I think the main point of the article is pretty clearly true and I appreciate the way it is written.
Part of the controversy might be because this is now the second article written here on the forum by a Fund Manager, which on an uncharitable reading could seem like they are saying that that Anthropic money will mostly go through us fund managers. We are the middle men with the power. So either appeal to fund managers like us or don't bother. @SiobhanBall makes a similar point above.
Even if the advice is true, useful and given with a great heart (which I'm sure is the case here) it has a "gatekeepy" vibe for orgs not close to the "inner ring".
I have mixed feelings. On one hand this I agree that the advice is good and pretty common sense like you say (I certainly won't be cold calling Anthropic staff and wouldn't regardless). On the other hand when I read things like these...
"In the past year, donors working inside frontier AI labs have started routing large global health gifts to me to place."
and
"the most credible way to demonstrate this is to be highly rated by EA-aligned evaluators and grantmakers, already trusted by AI staff: Coefficient Giving, GiveWell...."
It feels like power over this money is likely to be heavily concentrated people in the "inner ring" who are already highly connected to Anthropic Staff and the current EA power structures. Power concentration combined with money concentration could be fine, but makes me nervous given both FTX, and that (Along with established funds) we are already seeing a bunch of new funds, led by people with not much experience, which might give out tens of millions of dollars without masses of accountability around them.
I love both of your ideas "Perhaps one aspect that could be valuable is to provide a list of more independent advisors?". Sounds great, keeping in mind we would have to accept that if these advisors were truly "independent" from the EA circles, then they will be a bit less "EA" in their advice, and will more heavily weight less-EA considerations like orgs' track record, local grounding and non DIY scale pathways.
I also like your other idea about talking with other big donors, and there are plenty of donors who give in the tens to hundreds of millions although not quite at GiveWell/Gates scale. Again the advice will be a little less EA aligned if moving outside the few core EA orgs for advice.
In addition to @huw's great comment, there's a branch of EA which focuses on well-being, and with that focus mental health interventions often look really effective. Check out the happier lives institute Huw mentioned, times the "WELLBY" and @MichaelPlant
Why would that be the case? I could work from my hut in Uganda on trying to shoot down Russian drones over Ukraine and it would not achieve anything. Obviously that's a dumb strawmanb but just because people work on something doesn't mean they will achieve anything.
Too late, but I would ask her to make the best case against immigration haha (much like you did with me and BINGOs 😅)
This is incredible, the best Global Health vid I've seen in ages so stoked! I know a vid is good when I feel comfortable imediately recommending it to non-EA friends.
I'm surprised it has so few hits, is there any marketing for this? Also is there a reason it isn't on an official GWWC channel rather than a personal one?
Whoever disagreed with this should take a good hard look at themselves...
I see you as a founder regardless @huw. It's a weird word but it's well accepted in the social enterprise works at least that people who come in 2-3 years down the line and creatively grow an org are founders. I suppose it's just semantics though.
I've been mulling over this quote from Naomi Klein over the last couple of days. I think its a strong summary of one of the best ethical arguments against the top AI labs.
My argument against this might be that the actual purpose of commercial application is to improve human wellbeing and prosperity overall, not to eliminate jobs. Jobs may or may not be eliminated, but either option could be fine if the prosperity is shared (at least somewhat) throughout humanity.
Then there are orgs like Mechanize, which are explicitly trying to eliminate jobs...
Besides that on the "theft" of creativity front, I think this is broadly true but I'm not sure what can be done at this point. To generalise (even with coding) AI feeds of the best that humanity has to offer then produces worse-than-the-best output much faster, at a fraction of the cost. Without the best of human IP, AI wouldn't be very good. Newer models may be starting to be better than the best humans in niche areas, but this isn't the norm.
I talk a lot about how AI helps us provide healthcare to some of the poorest people, but I still don't have the greatest response to these kind of criticisms from many of my friends. I wonder how others respond to people when they bring arguments like this?