MIRI president Nate Soares argues early Effective Altruism organizations underestimated AI timelines, citing 80,000 Hours as evidence
Geoffrey Irving similarly critiqued the Long Now Foundation's timeline.
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@So8res Similar complaint against a similar-but-much-worse mistake by the Long Now Foundation:
naml.us
Against long term thinking | naml.us
The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996 to develop the Clock a nd Library projects, as well as to become the seed of a very long-term cultural institution. The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide a counterpoint to today’s accelerating culture and help make long-term thinking more common. We hope to foster responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years. The 01996 gimic is to remind people of the $10^4$ year timescale. While I agree that our society focuses too much on the short term,
Nate Soares ⏹️@So8resEarly EAs branded their organizations with names like "80,000 hours", from which you can deduce that they were pretty bad at internalizing the possibility of AI.
4:12 PM · May 27, 2026 · 12.4K Views
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