why MIRI should receive Effective Altruism funding
I guess the argument is that (a) a superhuman AI will probably be developed soon, (b) whether it is properly aligned with human values or not will have tremendous impact on the future of humanity, and (c) MIRI is one of the organizations that take this problem most seriously.
If you agree with all three parts, then the funding makes sense. If you disagree with any one of them, it does not. At least from political perspective, it would be better to not talk about funding missions that require belief in several controversial statements to justify them.
This is partially about plausibility of the claims, and partially about prevention vs reaction. Other EA charities are reactive: a problem already exists, we want to solve it. In case of malaria, it is not about curing the people who are already sick, but about preventing other people from getting sick… but anyway, people sick of malaria already exist.
I was looking for some analogy, when humanity spent a lot of resources on prevention, but I actually don’t remember any. Even recently with covid, a lot of people had to die first; perhaps at the beginning we could have prevented all this, but precisely because it did not happen yet, it didn’t seem important.
I guess the argument is that (a) a superhuman AI will probably be developed soon, (b) whether it is properly aligned with human values or not will have tremendous impact on the future of humanity, and (c) MIRI is one of the organizations that take this problem most seriously.
If you agree with all three parts, then the funding makes sense. If you disagree with any one of them, it does not. At least from political perspective, it would be better to not talk about funding missions that require belief in several controversial statements to justify them.
This is partially about plausibility of the claims, and partially about prevention vs reaction. Other EA charities are reactive: a problem already exists, we want to solve it. In case of malaria, it is not about curing the people who are already sick, but about preventing other people from getting sick… but anyway, people sick of malaria already exist.
I was looking for some analogy, when humanity spent a lot of resources on prevention, but I actually don’t remember any. Even recently with covid, a lot of people had to die first; perhaps at the beginning we could have prevented all this, but precisely because it did not happen yet, it didn’t seem important.