To give an update about what the Lightcone Infrastructure team has been working on: we recently decided to close down a big project we’d been running for the last 1.5 years, an office space in Berkeley for people working on x-risk/EA/rationalist things that we opened August 2021.
At some point I hope we publish a postmortem, but for now here’s a copy of the announcement I wrote in the office slack announcing its closure 2-3 week ago.
Hello there everyone,
Sadly, I’m here to write that we’ve decided to close down the Lightcone Offices by the end of March. While we initially intended to transplant the office to the Rose Garden Inn, Oliver has decided (and I am on the same page about this decision) to make a clean break going forward to allow us to step back and renegotiate our relationship to the entire EA/longtermist ecosystem, as well as change what products and services we build.
Below I’ll give context on the decision and other details, but the main practical information is that the office will no longer be open after Friday March 24th. (There will be a goodbye party on that day.)
I asked Oli to briefly state his reasoning for this decision, here’s what he says:
An explicit part of my impact model for the Lightcone Offices has been that its value was substantially dependent on the existing EA/AI Alignment/Rationality ecosystem being roughly on track to solve the world’s most important problems, and that while there are issues, pouring gas into this existing engine, and ironing out its bugs and problems, is one of the most valuable things to do in the world.
I had been doubting this assumption of our strategy for a while, even before FTX. Over the past year (with a substantial boost by the FTX collapse) my actual trust in this ecosystem and interest in pouring gas into this existing engine has greatly declined, and I now stand before what I have helped built with great doubts about whether it all will be or has been good for the world.
I respect many of the people working here, and I am glad about the overall effect of Lightcone on this ecosystem we have built, and am excited about many of the individuals in the space, and probably in many, maybe even most, future worlds I will come back with new conviction to invest and build out this community that I have been building infrastructure for for almost a full decade. But right now, I think both me and the rest of Lightcone need some space to reconsider our relationship to this whole ecosystem, and I currently assign enough probability that building things in the space is harmful for the world that I can’t really justify the level of effort and energy and money that Lightcone has been investing into doing things that pretty indiscriminately grow and accelerate the things around us.
(To Oli’s points I’ll add to this that it’s also an ongoing cost in terms of time, effort, stress, and in terms of a lack of organizational focus on the other ideas and projects we’d like to pursue.)
Oli, myself, and the rest of the Lightcone team will be available to discuss more about this in the channel #closing-office-reasoning where I invite any and all of you who wish to to discuss this with me, the rest of the lightcone team, and each other.
In the last few weeks I sat down and interviewed people leading the 3 orgs whose primary office is here (FAR, AI Impacts, and Encultured) and 13 other individual contributors. I asked about how this would affect them, how we could ease the change, and generally get their feelings about how the ecosystem is working out. These conversations lasted on average 45 mins each, and it was very interesting to hear people’s thoughts about this, and also their suggestions about other things Lightcone could work on.
These conversations also left me feeling more hopeful about building related community-infrastructure in the future, as I learned of a number of positive effects that I wasn’t aware of. These conversations all felt pretty real, I respect all the people involved more, and I hope to talk to many more of you at length before we close.
From the check-ins I’ve done with people, this seems to me to be enough time to not disrupt any SERI MATS mentorships, and to give the orgs here a comfortable enough amount of time to make new plans, but if this does put you in a tight spot, please talk to us and we’ll see how we can help.
The campus team (me, Oli, Jacob, Rafe) will be in the office for lunch tomorrow (Friday at 1pm) to discuss any and all of this with you. We’d like to know how this is affecting you, and I’d really like to know about costs this has for you that I’m not aware of. Please feel free (and encouraged) to just chat with us in your lightcone channels (or in any of the public office channels too).
Otherwise, a few notes:
The Lighthouse system is going away when the leases end. Lighthouse 1 has closed, and Lighthouse 2 will continue to be open for a few more months.
If you would like to start renting your room yourself from WeWork, I can introduce you to our point of contact, who I think would be glad to continue to rent the offices. Offices cost between $1k and $6k a month depending on how many desks are in them.
Here’s a form to give the Lightcone team anonymous feedback about this decision (or anything).
To talk with people about future plans starting now and after the offices close, whether to propose plans or just to let others know what you’ll be doing, I’ve made the #future-plans channel and added you all to it.
It’s been a thrilling experience to work alongside and get to know so many people dedicated to preventing an existential catastrophe, and I’ve made many new friends working here, thank you, but I think me and the Lightcone Team need space to reflect and to build something better if Earth is going to have a shot at aligning the AGIs we build.
As it should be, because the anonymous survey about the SF offices is not for you. It’s for the people who were using the offices in question and thus have access to the original Slack channel posting with the link intact. (Obviously, you can’t filter out rando Internet submissions of ‘feedback’ if it’s anonymous.)
To give an update about what the Lightcone Infrastructure team has been working on: we recently decided to close down a big project we’d been running for the last 1.5 years, an office space in Berkeley for people working on x-risk/EA/rationalist things that we opened August 2021.
At some point I hope we publish a postmortem, but for now here’s a copy of the announcement I wrote in the office slack announcing its closure 2-3 week ago.
jesus o.o
The link seems to be missing.
Also: Looking forward to the postmortem.
As it should be, because the anonymous survey about the SF offices is not for you. It’s for the people who were using the offices in question and thus have access to the original Slack channel posting with the link intact. (Obviously, you can’t filter out rando Internet submissions of ‘feedback’ if it’s anonymous.)