Sam Altman’s Problem Poses Challenges for Effective Altruism
In a New York City dive bar one December evening, the sound system blasted Pitbull’s music as a group of young individuals with similar beliefs engaged in fervent discussions about ethics and the destiny of mankind. This gathering marked the local community of effective altruists’ “end of year celebration.”
It seemed like EA didn’t have much to celebrate. Because for the second time in as many years, A Guy Named Sam was an extraordinary technology story and an obvious indictment of EA’s philosophy. This time it wasn’t cryptocriminal Sam Bankman-Fried, but AI industry superstar Sam Altman.
For those who call themselves effective altruists, the epitome of a philosophy shaped by doing good, there has been quite a rush on how to make as much money as possible for world-saving purposes. In August 2022, after being bathed in the glow of a best-selling book by the store’s co-founder William MacAskill, the hype quickly dissipated when Bankman-Fried collapsed a few months later.
The cryptocurrency entrepreneur had been one of EA’s best-known supporters. As the Bankman-Fried companies collapsed, MacAskill remained mostly silent.
But the EA meetings continued, and the focus for many remained on how to do the most good. That was the main topic of conversation at an East Village bar earlier this month as attendees sampled vegan snacks and drank beer.
Rachael Woodard wasn’t interested in talking about either Sami. He lives in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, in a house with eight EA friends, and said he sometimes gets confused trying to decide how to make the best of the world. He’s training for the 80,000-hour project — devoting that much time in his career to solving the world’s most pressing problems — but was unsure if his role would really have the biggest impact.
People in this group were especially concerned about animals – the meat industry and factory farming. In the rest of EA, it’s the AI threat to humanity.
The tension between EA, which held seats on OpenAI’s board and fired Altman as CEO, and Altman, who is more optimistic about AI, gave another blow to the movement. Altman won the battle, getting himself reinstated as CEO, and most of the board was ousted.
After the saga, Vinod Khosla, a billionaire venture capitalist and OpenAI investor, posted on X mocking “the ignorant misapplied religion of EA against the true vision of AI”. Harvard University professor Steven Pinker called EA a “cultist” and said it had lost its way.
So what about these supposed cult members? Well, many of them are still worried about AI.
Garrison Lovely, an enthusiastic member wearing a Hawaiian shirt, described a paper he was writing about the overlooked risks of artificial intelligence. He went on to describe how extraordinary the last couple of years had been for EA and how it made him feel like an early employee of a unicorn startup. Wealth, media attention and money raised.
Some of the attendees admitted they were frustrated by EA’s backlash, incited by a group calling themselves the Power Accelerators, but mostly they were idealists looking to create a better future — if the robots don’t kill us first.
