111–120 of 186 posts
I think there are more important causes than "reducing potential risks from advanced AI". Honest to god, $30M will go a long way in saving lives TODAY. Flint, MI anyone?
Human species extinction is something almost everyone agrees shouldn't happen.
Scroll to the end. This is a $30M grant to the guy's roommate and future brother-in-law. Unbelievable.
I want to make sure I fully understand the accusation here. You're saying that the Open Philanthropy Fund - which is funded by an $8.3 billion grant from Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, also close associates - is funneling $30M money to an organization that pays below market rates ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-compensation-like-at-the-non-p... ), run by people who have dedicated their professional careers and milli…
The likelihood that this $30m is the best possible use of that money? It just happens to be that this personal connection occurs by chance? Pretty much zero. Of course all opportunities in life are down to your network, but this is pretty cut-and-dry nepotism.
If this were a totally unrelated personal investment by Dustin in a friend, it would not be seen as problematic. By investing through these supposedly impartial organisations that aim to influence everyone's behaviour, their credibility in this mission is clearly harmed.
(At least this my initial response, while allowing that this may change if a more detailed analysis shows this to be misplaced. But without this expression of mistrust, such an analysis is highly unlikely to take place, and I do not immediately see how it could fully alleviate this concern)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a strawman. People who scoff at the "AI risk" cult don't believe that "AI will be totally fine". They just believe that it doesn't deserve the undue amount of attention it gets, which distracts from other more important and related risks, such as what Cambridge Analytica did for Trump, fake news due to internet, Facebook's bubbles, etc. The belief is to solve problems we have right now, or will have in 10-20 y…
I've been personally told by multiple different people who scoff at AI risk that it will be totally fine, so it's not a straw man. The median expert estimate for when we'll be 10% likely to have human-level AI is ~10 years. AI risk research didn't receive a penny of funding until the last few years, and is still funded at way lower levels than a lot of things that have dramatically less impact. In nearly every debate…
I first opened the "FHI Winter Intelligence" report: it's an informal survey made to 35 participants of a conference, of which only 8 work on AI at all (let alone be an expert in AGI).
I then looked at the "Kruel interviews", which the site reports as giving a prediction of "2025" for 10% chance, yet reading the interviews it's quite clear that many gave no prediction at all. Also, averaging answers by people ranging from Pat Heyes to PhD students seems suspect.
Is your number based on these reports?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to make sure I fully understand the accusation here. You're saying that the Open Philanthropy Fund - which is funded by an $8.3 billion grant from Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, also close associates - is funneling $30M money to an organization that pays below market rates ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-compensation-like-at-the-non-p... ), run by people who have dedicated their professional careers and milli…
I don't know - it certainly seems to me that this seriously tarnishes the credibility of Give Well, whose stated aim is to improve everyone's (not just Dustin's) charitable resource allocation. The likelihood that this $30m is the best possible use of that money? It just happens to be that this personal connection occurs by chance? Pretty much zero. Of course all opportunities in life are down to your network, but th…
Go to OPP's (or Good Ventures') site and notice the glaring lack of a donate button.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't get rid of human religious longing easily. Instead of the rapture and armageddon, we have transhumanism and ai risk.
Fun fact: You can apply this template to anyone worried about any potential disaster. "Behold the cult of global warming, who believe that the unclean practices of man will anger the sky gods and bring down furious vengeance. Sad to see so many otherwise-smart climatologists drawn in by this drivel." "'Antibiotic resistance'? Oh my god, you must be one of those 'biosecurity cultists'. Do you really believe that magic…
Meanwhile, all we have from the AGI doomsday people is sci-fi stories, and actual programs that still can barely distinguish a cat from a mole even after looking at thousands of pictures.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I want to make sure I fully understand the accusation here. You're saying that the Open Philanthropy Fund - which is funded by an $8.3 billion grant from Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, also close associates - is funneling $30M money to an organization that pays below market rates ( https://www.quora.com/What-is-compensation-like-at-the-non-p... ), run by people who have dedicated their professional careers and milli…
I don't know - it certainly seems to me that this seriously tarnishes the credibility of Give Well, whose stated aim is to improve everyone's (not just Dustin's) charitable resource allocation. The likelihood that this $30m is the best possible use of that money? It just happens to be that this personal connection occurs by chance? Pretty much zero. Of course all opportunities in life are down to your network, but th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fun fact: You can apply this template to anyone worried about any potential disaster. "Behold the cult of global warming, who believe that the unclean practices of man will anger the sky gods and bring down furious vengeance. Sad to see so many otherwise-smart climatologists drawn in by this drivel." "'Antibiotic resistance'? Oh my god, you must be one of those 'biosecurity cultists'. Do you really believe that magic…
Thing is, we have good evidence that all those things actually happen (except maybe the nuclear winter), and that they are/were increasing. Meanwhile, all we have from the AGI doomsday people is sci-fi stories, and actual programs that still can barely distinguish a cat from a mole even after looking at thousands of pictures.
Or maybe if there were any evidence that AI capabilities are increasing, like becoming dominant at Chess or Go, driverless cars, or a slew of recent papers on transfer learning.
Maybe if one of the co-authors of the leading AI textbook, Stuart Russell, voiced concerns, we could count that as evidence.
But you're right, it's better to wait until we know for a fact that someone's built an agent smart enough to end civilization before we commit any resources to the problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know - it certainly seems to me that this seriously tarnishes the credibility of Give Well, whose stated aim is to improve everyone's (not just Dustin's) charitable resource allocation. The likelihood that this $30m is the best possible use of that money? It just happens to be that this personal connection occurs by chance? Pretty much zero. Of course all opportunities in life are down to your network, but th…
This isn't a GiveWell rec, it's an OPP grant. OPP literally exists to give away Dustin's money. Go to OPP's (or Good Ventures') site and notice the glaring lack of a donate button.
edit: I cannot reply to the below, so I will edit my comment.
I am aware that GiveWell does not invest money. Instead it provides impartial analysis of investment impact. My contention is that this was not impartial. Dustin can handle his own money, but:
People using GiveWell to decide their own investments should now think twice in my view. Which kind of defeats the whole point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not his money, though. Also, when you invest in your friend's business, you don't get to deduct that in your taxes.
It's not Holden's money - he works for OPP, he doesn't fund it. The money comes from Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna, and it's already in a trust.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know - it certainly seems to me that this seriously tarnishes the credibility of Give Well, whose stated aim is to improve everyone's (not just Dustin's) charitable resource allocation. The likelihood that this $30m is the best possible use of that money? It just happens to be that this personal connection occurs by chance? Pretty much zero. Of course all opportunities in life are down to your network, but th…
This personal connection did not occur by chance, but the causality you assign is reversed. Holden did not support OpenAI because his housemates work there. Rather, it is because of their similar worldviews that they live together in the first place. It is unsurprising that people who think safe AGI is a critically important investment end up in the same social circle.
Otherwise a large percentage of Hacker News should now be expecting similar investments to pursue research projects.
Look, I do not really care if somebody rich invests in somebody they know. But I do now doubt GiveWell's impartiality of analysis in other instances, and general good judgement. I will not be using their judgement to inform my charitable giving.