EA Safety - by Venkatesh Rao - Contraptions

EA promises to solve AI Safety. Now we have two problems.

This is going to be one of those rare essays where I feel it is necessary to share some personal history and context for the story to make sense. Over nearly 20 years of writing online, I have a had a sometimes entertaining, sometimes fraught, but always increasingly asymmetric relationship with the rationalist community, or what I will relabel in this essay the EA formation, for reasons that will become clear. The community began as a personal blog (Overcoming Bias) around the same time as my own now-retired blog (Ribbonfarm), around 2006-07. But where the rationalist scene grew from mere…

saved by

• Dheera Vuppala
• Lydia Nottingham

related reading

• Doing EA Better — EA Forumforum.effectivealtruism.org
• Reframing AI Safety as a Neverending Institutional Challenge – Stephen Casperstephencasper.com
• Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?asteriskmag.substack.com
• A guide to the AI tribes - by Michel Justen - What is thismicheljusten.substack.com
• The Soul of EA is in Troublefrommatter.substack.com
• Where I agree and disagree with Eliezer — LessWronglesswrong.com
• I'm Switching Into AI Safetyalexirpan.com
• Notes on Effective Altruismmichaelnotebook.com
• Saving Everyone, Everywhere, Across Space and Time - 34th Street Magazine34st.com
• University EA Groups Need Fixing — EA Forumforum.effectivealtruism.org
• Field-building and the epistemic culture of AI safetyfirstmonday.org
• Which side of the AI safety community are you in? — LessWronglesswrong.com