/ai

A user jokes about an “EA polycule” takeover of ASI · Digg

A user jokes about an “EA polycule” takeover of ASI

“It's the EA polycule taking over ASI,” a user quips while quoting another post.

TLDR

A user’s quote-post offers a joking characterization of ASI: “It's the EA polycule taking over ASI.”

Combined views

355.1K

25 Sources, first seen 5d ago

5.1K likes

A user jokes about an “EA polycule” takeover of ASI

“It's the EA polycule taking over ASI,” a user quips while quoting another post.

Combined views

355.1K

25 Sources, first seen 5d ago

5.1K likes

5d ago

first seen 5d ago

469 comments

801 saves

726 reposts

5d ago

first seen 5d ago

TLDR

A user’s quote-post offers a joking characterization of ASI: “It's the EA polycule taking over ASI.”

469 comments

801 saves

726 reposts

Sentiment

Positive9.2%90.8%Negative

Summary

Negative replies accused Effective Altruism of insularity, power grabs, and poor self-control in AI circles, while a few praised its openness to criticism and charitable giving pledges.

Based on 200 sentiment-bearing replies from 120 accounts across 5 conversations.

Sentiment

Positive9.2%90.8%Negative

Summary

Negative replies accused Effective Altruism of insularity, power grabs, and poor self-control in AI circles, while a few praised its openness to criticism and charitable giving pledges.

Based on 200 sentiment-bearing replies from 120 accounts across 5 conversations.

25 Sources

@beffjezosIt's the EA polycule taking over ASI @TaylorLorenzAre there any people who are concerned about AI existential risk who are *not* connected in any way with EA? I am genuinely curious bc so far it seems like something that has solely emerged from that religion/belief system. Who are the non EA-related ppl engaged on this issue?@SarahShoker@TaylorLorenz This depends on how you define existential risk imo. eg. The communities engaged with autonomous weapons and military AI are overwhelmingly not EA. There is also (minor) overlap in the non-proliferation WMD community. EA defines ‘existential risk’ pretty narrowly, unfortunately.@tenobrus"why are all the people who care about or know anything about ai safety EAs and rationalists?? where are the truly independent thinkers from diverse intellectual backgrounds???" dawg they all spent the last decade denying even basic capabilities trajectories and calling risk sci-fi. u can hardly blame a subculture for being a monoculture in a field when it's literally the only group of people who took that field seriously and tried to build it out, all while screaming at the top of their lungs about it and begging others to pay attention. so yeah pile on in here, time to pay attention, time to upskill, get those communist and MAGA safety thinktanks running. but don't pretend this is some kind of conspiracy, and don't pretend you can just show up to the party years late and have any real idea what you're talking about right off the bat.@DKokotajloRT @tenobrus: "why are all the people who care about or know anything about ai safety EAs and rationalists?? where are the truly independen…@TaylorLorenzWhen I said people I meant AI researchers not just random people, should have clarified!@gleech@TaylorLorenz Alan Turing (1951), Norbert Wiener (1960), Irving Good (1965), Vernor Vinge (1993), Bill Joy (2000), Stephen Hawking (2014), Geoffrey Hinton (2023), Yoshua Bengio (2023), Eric Schmidt (2023), Daniel Kahneman (2024), Daniel Dennett (2024), Ray Kurzweil, Steve Bannon, Ross Douthat @S_OhEigeartaighBasically none of the 'big' names - Bengio, Hinton et al - emerged from it, though they've obviously engaged since, in the way that one engages with other colleagues working on /worried about similar issues. Bengio took a long time to be convinced that such concerns were worth taking seriously, he writes about it in his blog.@S_OhEigeartaighAnd most of the current/ex company AI researchers worried about it are not people who 'emerged from it', though many of them will have had discussions at some point with people in the broader EA-associated sphere working on this. It's the problem with this cynical 'religion' caricature; what's actually going on is people becoming convinced by a combination of other people's arguments and what they see in their own work. Or alternatively, the EA religion confers mind-control powers that brainwashes all these people into believing crazy things that they extremely don't want to believe about their own work and own area of expertise, also a possibility I guess.@dhadfieldmenellRT @gleech: @TaylorLorenz Alan Turing (1951), Norbert Wiener (1960), Irving Good (1965), Vernor Vinge (1993), Bill Joy (2000), Stephen Hawk…@mmitchell_aiThe reason I got into AI ethics was because I foresaw how these systems would be incorporated into missile launch systems. @haydenfield first asked me about this and reported the start of it in the first paragraph here: https://www.techbrew.com/stories/2021/03/29/one-biggest-advancements-ai-also-sparked-fierce-debate-heres And I gave the full story at my @IASEAIorg keynote last year, here (story starts around 5:20): https://youtu.be/HSrbRabn7X4?t=319&si=V-vqKh4h2O9ckLao @QiaochuYuani have many disagreements with effective altruism, even when i was a rationalist i never thought of myself as an EA, but the recent spate of anti-EA nonsense is so blatantly obviously in bad faith i am compelled to do a "nobody gets to pick on my cousin except me" here EAs have consistently been among the most kind, thoughtful, level-headed, and principled people i've ever met. along with rationalists they are the only subcultures i've ever encountered who have a strong norm that they can in theory be persuaded to change their minds on consequential topics by good arguments. you should seriously consider the possibility that, for example, the reason tech billionaire dustin moskovitz funds one of the largest EA organizations is that EAs presented him what he saw as the best argument for what he should do with his billions, which is to find a bunch of thoughtful people to think seriously about how to best spend them to most improve people's lives globally. that is extremely laudable and pretty much the best case! many people are, i think, confused and perhaps frightened about why this relatively small insular ideological group suddenly appears to have such weirdly large amounts of power, especially power wrt AI. you should seriously consider the possibility that it's in part it's because they spent the last 15 years successfully convincing a bunch of powerful people to listen to them using Facts and Logic, and/or that they themselves decided to acquire power using Facts and Logic (such as arguments that AI would be a big deal and thus one should start an AI company, invest in an AI company, or join an AI company). there is a fairly public history here which it is trivial for you to get an LLM to explain to you which you could learn! EAs are (mostly, with of course infamous exceptions) trying to do good things for good reasons and are responsive to thoughtful serious critique. they want thoughtful serious critique! they will listen to thoughtful serious critique! you do not have to call them names and schoolyard bully them!@hilbertspaessYeah, this is a really important question. I’ve been associating with rationalists for almost a decade. Their ideas were compelling and you can’t deny their foresight. The founders of every superintelligence effort are all bound up in the rationality sphere. Sam Altman and Greg Brockman used to frequent the MIRI offices. The way I relate to rationalists is it’s like the bizarre hypertrophied physiques on specialized athletes. In my opinion they have weirdly specialized minds that make them uniquely able to be correct about topics removed from daily experience. These “specialized minds” also can make them off-putting to many people. I dont know if I’d consider myself a rationalist. I am intuitively opposed to polyamory, veganism, and consequentialist intuitions. But I certainly trust them to be correct about factual questions.@tszzlRT @hilbertspaess: @edzitron Yeah, this is a really important question. I’ve been associating with rationalists for almost a decade. Their…@omricerenI finally read through the Effective Altruism Handbook. A bunch of Model UN kids discovered opportunity cost and expected value, so we're supposed to cede the most important technology in human history to the Chinese Communist Party. "These dissolve all the problems in economics, political theory, and moral philosophy! And, look, you can tell it's true because you can calculate it to several decimals! Why has no one thought of this before?" Quivering, hand-wringing, mask-wearing, polycule-dwelling, group-house weirdos.@AndyMasleyA big part of EA's insularity comes from the fact that we've been collectively desperate to talk to more people who are willing to entertain the idea of and risks from generally intelligent machines. A ton of people just immediately react to this as impossible sci fi despite it being the ultimate goal of the field of AI in general, and if people just write it off without being willing to even engage in the argument we politely move on to find people to work together on it elsewhere. Even now, a lot of the same people saying EA has religious-level beliefs about AI just won't actually engage with the idea that machines could be intelligent or that this could create insane new risks, so our response has mostly been to engage more with people who will think through the argument with us. There are lots of good arguments against a lot of the AI risks EAs worry about from people who can actually seriously entertain the idea of machine intelligence, but a lot of intellectual culture is so allergic to even thinking about the problem, or updating on the fact that many of the most common beliefs in analytic philosophy point to intelligent machines being possible, that we're left without bridges to them at all. We're just met with a sneer at how ridiculous it is to think that the human mind isn't magical. So we feel like we just need to carry on among people who will debate and disagree under the single unifying assumption that AGI is possible in principle and that it could be wild.@raboisRT @omriceren: I finally read through the Effective Altruism Handbook. A bunch of Model UN kids discovered opportunity cost and expected va…@DKokotajloRT @AndyMasley: A big part of EA's insularity comes from the fact that we've been collectively desperate to talk to more people who are wil…@suchenzangis there a version of EA just for sober uncs & aunties? (aka no crypto, orgies, or human-extinction-from-ai fears?)@BrianRoemmeleAre you part of the Effective Altruist polycule? While they save the world from naughty AI they let off some steam at “Slutcon”. They know what’s bad and what is really BAD.@GallatinHODLThis is what they want Ai 'aligned" with...@eddiejiao_objit's wild to me how much the discourse today (AI safety, EA, etc.) is shaped by a pretty small cohort of people who stayed in SF through the pandemic and formed a tight community ~2021-22 @AltimorRT @DKThomp: Briefly, on why I pay attention to the EA/rationalists: Imagine you have an extremely nerdy friend who, in the mid-2000s, wou…@soleioRT @eddiejiao_obj: it's wild to me how much the discourse today (AI safety, EA, etc.) is shaped by a pretty small cohort of people who stay…@binarybitsCurrent AI discourse is a good example of how individuals can have a huge impact. I think we'd be having a much different conversation today if Eleizer Yudkowsky and Nick Bostrom had not convinced Elon, Sam, Dario, Demis, and Dustin about AI risk 12-16 years ago.

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