New OpenAI CEO Was in H. Potter Fanfic That's Popular with Effective Altruists | Hacker News Reader

New OpenAI CEO Was in H. Potter Fanfic That's Popular with Effective Altruists

404media.co

12 pointsc5karl12 comments

>Effective altruism is the ideology that permeates OpenAI’s nonprofit board and, broadly speaking, EAs are obsessed with the possibility of human extinction via AI superintelligence.

I thought that was "e/acc" not Effective Altruism (that thing that FTX SBF espoused)

There's a lot of overlap. Sean Carroll did a podcast episode with Will MacAskill, some of it going into how EA kind of leads into "prevent civilisation-ending situations", though I don't remember if they touched on AI specifically.

I'm sure theres some overlap especially between those who espouse one or both philosophies but I think the author might be confusing one for the other.

Is there some sort of sparknotes or summary out there of the effective altruism and e/acc schools that would help catch-up the uninformed?

interesting to read that hpmor was a rationalist recruiting tool. I have very little patience for the entire rationalist movement, but I read and enjoyed it as an entertaining piece of fanfic.

I've heard about the FanFic before, from someone who was super pro-rationlism/strong atheism/logical thinking type, but not that it was a recruiting tool which is very interesting and connects a lot of boxes.

Recruiting tool??? Wow. I mostly enjoyed reading it - but it seemed to be a crackfic, set in an apocalyptic Harry Potter / Revelations / Bizarro World alternate reality. With the not-so-subtle message that rationalism would be quite maladaptive if not malevolent in anything resembling our universe...

It appears that Bloomberg ran such a story this year spring.

I recall I was aware of lesswrong.com when it was still about bayesian stuff and not the hive of basilisk oil salesmen. So, before I stumbled on the fanfic (penned by "Less Wrong"), but for plenty of folks it might have been the other way round.

Is that a new kind of McCarthyism?

I also think EA is mostly unhelpful and possibly even dangerous, but it's more effective and honest to criticise actions rather than association.

EA might be better than the unfettered-greed approach of so many of the super-wealthy these days.

It's connected to it directly - EA demands that if you can make huge money it's "altruistic" to do so, because then you could use that money to help more people. It's a set of mental processes that help the ultra-wealthy absolve themselves of the terrible guilt of being ultra-wealthy.

I'm pretty sure it's the other way around. You can't give away lots of money without first earning lots of money.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com