I think people are, generally speaking, being too simplistic between "capabilities" and "alignment". I assume most people on the forum use ChatGPT/Claude or other LLM apps and don't think they pose, in their current form, much of a safety concern.

I am far more concerned of "geniuses in a data center" which Dario/Sam seem to be pushing for, than I am of more economically useful AI. 

I furthermore think that Matthew and to a lesser extent, Tamay and Ege have engaged significantly with AI risk arguments than most people.

Disclosure: I'm one of the investors in Mechanize

can you spell out the clear plan? feel free to DM me also

Happy to see this. Seeing how much was cut, I agree that GWWC was trying to do too many things. The one I at first questioned was "translations" but I think you guys have a good point regarding Google Translate and other organizations who should take over non-English languages.

I understand this. Good analogy.

I suppose what it comes down to is that I actually DO think it is morally better for the person earning $10m/year to donate $9.9m/year than $9m/year, about $900k/year better.

I want to achieve two things (which I expect you will agree with).

1. I want to "capture" the good done by anyone and everyone willing to contribute and I want them welcomed, accepted and appreciated by the EA community. This means that if a person who could earn $10m/year in finance and is "only" willing to contribute $1m/year (10%) to effective causes, I don't want them turned away.
2. I want to encourage, inspire, motivate and push people to do better than they currently are (insofar as it's possible). I think that includes an Anthropic employee earning $500k/year doing mech interp, a quant trader earning $10m/year, a new grad deciding what to do with their career and a 65-year old who just heard of EA.

I think it's also reasonable for people to set limits for how much they are willing to do. 

Upvoted. I think this is a great argument. Timelines are a way overrated thing to be incessantly talking about and are often a distraction on what can be done.

Sure. But the average person working in AI is not at Jane St level like you and yes, OpenAI/Anthropic comp is extremely high.

I would also say that people still have a moral obligation. People don't choose to be smart enough to do ML work.

I don't want to argue in anyone's specific case, but I don't think it's universally true at all or even true the majority of the time that people that those working in AI could make more elsewhere. It sounds nice to say, but I think often people are earning more in AI jobs than they would elsewhere .

I think this statement is highly misleading. First, I think compared to most other fora and groups, this Forum is decidedly not catastrophizing Trump.

On a relative basis to other left-wing places, the forum is not catastrophizing Trump. I should have said that this post is catastrophizing Trump and is only getting the upvotes (at the time I posted, it was all upvotes and "agree" reacts), because of the forum's political bias.

Second, if you don't see "any evidence of an authoritarian takeover" then you are clearly not paying very much attention.

Again, I should be more precise but this is a misinterpretation I think. There is always evidence of authoritarian takeover by any President. Every President does things that are supposed to be done through Congress (for example, most military action). I agree that Trump has more authoritarian impulses than most but this is not nearly clearing the bar for, as the author says, "The current US administration is attempting an authoritarian takeover.". That's a very strong statement and the evidence doesn't back that up. It's hyperbolic.

I think 1, 3, and 4 are all possible.

Trump and crew spout millions of lies. It's very common at this point. If you get worked up about every one of these, you're going to lose your mind.

Look, I'm not happy about this Trump stuff either. It's incredibly destabilizing for many reasons. But you are going to lose focus on important things if you get swept up into the daily Trump news. If you are focused on AI safety or animal welfare or poverty or whatever it may be, your most effective thing will almost certainly be focusing on something else.

I think this is a valid concern, but I think it's important to note that if Richard were a left-winger, this same concern wouldn't be there.