She's the leading academic on the issue of AI safety. It's really ridiculous people don't even know her name and say random things about her, not realizing she's a rock star in her field.
Her leaving the board is a tremendous loss for OpenAI, about as terrible as Ilya leaving the board. These are two giants of AI currently.
I'm embarrassed she comes from my country, but not surprised about the particular uni she attended within my country.
I'm doubtful that the "childish idealist" description is accurate. But even if it was, given the choice between having existentially dangerous AI developed by a childish idealist vs a slippery machiavellian like Sam, I would choose the childish idealist.
The big risk with a childish idealist is that they become the pawn of a slippery machiavellian. Choosing the slippery machiavellian just seems like speedrunning failure.
I’m quite happy with the childish idealist description though. Putting childish idealists in charge of $billions of other people’s money might sound like a great idea to you, but would you put them in charge of your money?
Wikipedia says you have to apply to attend some EA events. That's true for lots of things. TED isn't open to just anyone either. If you want to go to an EA event without applying, most group events are pretty casual and don't require any application: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/groups (Note: I heard a rumor that EA events in Germany are less likely to be open to the public)
>Putting childish idealists in charge of $billions of other people’s money might sound like a great idea to you, but would you put them in charge of your money?
Well, I have in fact donated significant sums to some EA organizations, and I have a recurring donation to the Good Food Institute (working on meat alternatives). I don't agree with the "childish idealist" description of EA though. From my perspective, it's remarkable how easily Sam Altman seems to manipulate people, and he seems more successful at manipulating people outside of the EA community.
Other than telling me that you have a narrow understanding of a "cult", I'm not sure what this is supposed to communicate.
BTW, for people reading this discussion, here's an alternative explanation of why EA tends to be controversial: https://www.richardhanania.com/p/effective-altruism-thinks-y...
Peter Singer is more of an EA popularizer than an EA leader. The post you linked is the only post he has made in the past ~9 years: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/users/peter_singer The tweet you linked is related to his Journal of Controversial Ideas, not EA.
It's certainly not the case that Singer should be taken as representative of the average EA, you'd have to look at surveys for that: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/s/FxFwhFG227F6FgnKk However EA tends to be friendly to contrarian thought experiments (not usually taking it to Peter Singer levels). And EAs usually prefer to focus on getting facts right over condemning each other in an inflammatory way.
Is EA distancing itself from Singer (who's views are, by all accounts, extremely influential in the EA community), as they did with SBF (whose hedge fund's initial $170m seed capital was raised from EA devotees)? When multiple high-profile people associated with EA are proven to be....problematic, should we pretend the common factor linking them is insignificant?
Inflammatory? I thought I was quite restrained compared to some of the commenters on that Twitter thread.
From article, this is what I know about her:
>"Toner graduated from the University of Melbourne, Australia, in 2014 with a degree in chemical engineering and subsequently worked as a research analyst at a series of firms, including Open Philanthropy, a foundation that makes grants based on the effective-altruism philosophy."
>"In 2019, she spent nine months in Beijing studying its AI ecosystem. When she returned, Toner helped establish a research organization at Georgetown University, called the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, where she continues to work."
She's been working in the field of AI safety for what 3 years at most? I find it very hard to believe that she's "thee" leading academic on the issue of safety. Stuart Russell's group, the Center for Human Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, MIT's The Algorithmic Alignment Group and David Kruegger's group at Cambridge are all academic leaders and groups with great expertise in this subdomain.
Further it's not even clear what "studying Beijing's AI ecosystem" actually means. Does this refer to the city? The university? The CCPs' surveillance state(not likely)? It's very hand wavy.
I don't have any problem with what she did or her views. I also think it's a loss for the company. I do question her bona fides for being called the leading academic on the issue though.
It sounds like someone who talked a lot but didn’t actually create anything, change anything, or make anyone’s lives better.
Happy to revise my perspective if someone can provide any concrete data on her impact.
She was on the board that fired Sam Altman, that had the courage to fire Sam Altman, presumably (according to the article at least) because he is a liar and she and three other board members did not trust him to be loyal to the non-profit's mission of working to keep AI safe.
"In 2019, she spent nine months in Beijing studying its AI ecosystem. When she returned, Toner helped establish a research organization at Georgetown University, called the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, where she continues to work."
Yann LeCun is a leading academic...
Sounds like a made up position to me. Just another bureaucrat with a cool sounding name
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NNnQg0MAAAAJ&hl=en
Like, it's not a bad publication record, especially for a junior researcher (heck, her first participation in other people's papers is just in 2018 and her own work starts in 2021-2022, so she's effectively just getting started and may have many opportunities to prove herself in the future), it does indicate doing a couple years of research and might qualify for an okayish faculty job when (if?) she gets her PhD, but it's not also something indicating a senior researcher that's the pillar of anything and has had some impact - a grad student who's lucky to study in a strong leading researcher's lab and does some work on two of the advisor's papers might have a similar publication record already at their graduation before their career has even seriously started.
Many of her co-authors have significantly larger research impact and personal research (https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=VclFrJ8AAAAJ or https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=MbBntPgAAAAJ for example or https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=0-G2eiEAAAAJ) - which also raises a question of how much each co-author did in a two-author paper where the leading author is a strong researcher and the second author is a "Director of Strategy and Foundational Research Grants" i.e. getting money for that research, so labeling her as a leading researcher (much less the leading researcher) of some field seems misleading as the publication record would indicate that she's not even on the same level as they are.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=6-e-ZBEAAAAJ
I don't think "rock star" is quite the right term.
Unless you think David Geffen or Lester Bangs are rock stars. Normally rock stars sing or play an instrument. Someone who got a nice title in a nonprofit by writing about rock is not a rock star.