One thing I notice is that a lot of people are talking about "we" as members of the "EA community", but these people seem to have very different interpretations of what that means. It seems EA has outgrown itself.
At this stage, for me personally, the EA label feels like a liability. Membership to a club that I don't really want to be a part of. I want to be altruistic, effectively. But there are so many other things that seem to have become associated with EA that I really don't want to be.
I appreciate being part of this forum, though, because one characteristic of many EA individuals seems to be "thoughtful". I can't help but think there might be others who lurking around EA that feel the same way.
Fair enough. I might have been a little harsh in my comment, so my apologies to the OP. But I stand by the perspective.
This is fun
I don't see this as "fun" at all. As someone new to exploring this community, this information shared in this article makes me want to disengage. It describes serious cultural red flags like unprofessionalism, nepotism, and elitism that I'm not aligned with at all. And it does so using language that implicitly reinforces those values! So nope, not fun.
I get the subtext, but why not devote your energy to (re-)building community and welcoming people (maybe to your secret group chat?) instead of expounding on insecurities and elitism? How much time did you spend writing an essay about coolness, chats, and parties?
As someone who has just started engaging more, I find the culture of EA seems to be about demonstrating thoughtfulness, but at times the verbosity is cumbersome. Not sure if it's because it's largely grounded in academia/university? In industry, nobody communicates via 3000 word essays unless they are being sued.
I like the quote on agents accepting permadeath. I think "permadeath" is a good metaphor for what faces both individuals and humanity... and apparently permadeath.ai is already a thing and looking for contributors :)
Have you considered including your CTA "now is the time" in the TLDR? I almost missed it and thought it was valuable. Maybe a "what you can do" bullet list with three of your linked items: book, contact us, contact your rep. Just a thought.
Hope you don't mind, I added links to your media on awesome-responsible-ai (my attempt to curate the ecosystem for newcomers like myself)
I've been researching Responsible AI/AI Safety and recently started trying to map the space. My research didn't turn up any non-stale "awesome-" lists on GitHub except for one, which was owned by someone who also owns hundreds of other awesome lists and who has included a lot of donation/support-me CTAs. There was some decent content, but overall it looked like a land-grab.
So I decided to create an awesome-responsible-ai list for humans to curate:
In the spirit of the OP's post, I propose a new post: does hiring Impact Analysts work? You might want to commission a study of impact analyst effectiveness in real-world situations that involve small and messy data with long durations to outcomes.
While an eager Impact Analyst might nerd out on all sorts of fun academic tools and theoretical proposals, in industry and at this stage of your growth, nobody should really care about measuring if your programs work and everyone should share about making them work as well as possible. Spoiler: they work. If you don't accept that, then you have to accept that your programs certainly aren't hurting anyone and shouldn't be prematurely derailed because someone is skeptical about whether or how well they work.
IMHO, define a short-term performance metric and put this budget toward a relentless and talented PM who is incentivized by the metric. They should be able to set up the basic data gathering (you don't need anything fancy), listen to customer feedback, and iterate on your product quickly.
This is definitely not going to help:
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/yPi9W46rurF7MPfTY/about-the-altruists-the-netflix-series-on-ftx
One thing I notice is that a lot of people are talking about "we" as members of the "EA community", but these people seem to have very different interpretations of what that means. It seems EA has outgrown itself.
At this stage, for me personally, the EA label feels like a liability. Membership to a club that I don't really want to be a part of. I want to be altruistic, effectively. But there are so many other things that seem to have become associated with EA that I really don't want to be.
I appreciate being part of this forum, though, because one characteristic of many EA individuals seems to be "thoughtful". I can't help but think there might be others who lurking around EA that feel the same way.
Fair enough. I might have been a little harsh in my comment, so my apologies to the OP. But I stand by the perspective.
I don't see this as "fun" at all. As someone new to exploring this community, this information shared in this article makes me want to disengage. It describes serious cultural red flags like unprofessionalism, nepotism, and elitism that I'm not aligned with at all. And it does so using language that implicitly reinforces those values! So nope, not fun.
Thank you for sharing. Please do gather up the courage! I'd love to stay tuned to your posts, particularly the on-the-ground reality checks.
If you're able to write more, I would love to read about:
Looking forward to hearing more.
This is bizarre. And long.
I get the subtext, but why not devote your energy to (re-)building community and welcoming people (maybe to your secret group chat?) instead of expounding on insecurities and elitism? How much time did you spend writing an essay about coolness, chats, and parties?
100% agree, and for the same reasons.
bullets -> LLM -> Essay -> LLM -> bullets
As someone who has just started engaging more, I find the culture of EA seems to be about demonstrating thoughtfulness, but at times the verbosity is cumbersome. Not sure if it's because it's largely grounded in academia/university? In industry, nobody communicates via 3000 word essays unless they are being sued.
Thank you for sharing.
awesome-responsible-AI
I've been researching Responsible AI/AI Safety and recently started trying to map the space. My research didn't turn up any non-stale "awesome-" lists on GitHub except for one, which was owned by someone who also owns hundreds of other awesome lists and who has included a lot of donation/support-me CTAs. There was some decent content, but overall it looked like a land-grab.
So I decided to create an awesome-responsible-ai list for humans to curate:
https://github.com/ras44/awesome-responsible-ai
Contributions and comments welcome.
If you're technical, feel free to submit a PR directly on GitHub. Or DM'ing me here works too.
I hope it's useful for those trying to get a quick idea of what this space looks like.
Thanks.
Saving for retirement might be unnecessary if AI Policy doesn't work out, so might want to focus there ;)
In the spirit of the OP's post, I propose a new post: does hiring Impact Analysts work? You might want to commission a study of impact analyst effectiveness in real-world situations that involve small and messy data with long durations to outcomes.
While an eager Impact Analyst might nerd out on all sorts of fun academic tools and theoretical proposals, in industry and at this stage of your growth, nobody should really care about measuring if your programs work and everyone should share about making them work as well as possible. Spoiler: they work. If you don't accept that, then you have to accept that your programs certainly aren't hurting anyone and shouldn't be prematurely derailed because someone is skeptical about whether or how well they work.
IMHO, define a short-term performance metric and put this budget toward a relentless and talented PM who is incentivized by the metric. They should be able to set up the basic data gathering (you don't need anything fancy), listen to customer feedback, and iterate on your product quickly.
Agreed here
There's only really no point in doing any work at all if you are confident the outcome is bad.