Aschenbrenner is the face of the fund, which is named “Situational Awareness LP” after his famous essay, and he’s never identified or particularly associated with the rationalists, so I think Eliezer’s primarily going off of that. It’s accurate to say that Shulman has historically been in rationalist scene, but also I think he’s spent a great deal of his career in the EA scene (working with OpenPhil), and EAs would claim him as their own (i.e. many would call him a great EA, which they wouldn’t with Eliezer, Gwern, Zvi, etc), so it’s not inaccurate to call him an EA.
I hope Eliezer has let Shulman know that he’s lost a lot of respect in Eliezer’s eyes and done terrible things, but I think that given Shulman’s intentionally low profile, it would be somewhat rude to do it as loudly as when talking about Situational Awareness LP (e.g. which has an article about it in the WSJ, but whose article does not mention Shulman).
I hope Eliezer has let Shulman know that he’s lost a lot of respect in Eliezer’s eyes and done terrible things
You think Carl doesn’t already know that?
I’m not sure you’re modeling how uncompelling moral disapproval is to people who have their own considered views on a topic (as Carl does on the machine intelligence transition and how to intervene on it) rather than deferring to the same authorities that you do. Imagine if Tyler Cowen told you that by choosing to work at Lightcone Infrastructure, you’ve lost a lot of respect in his eyes and done terrible things. Not convincing, right?
Imagine if Tyler Cowen told you that by choosing to work at Lightcone Infrastructure, you’ve lost a lot of respect in his eyes and done terrible things. Not convincing, right?
I would like to know that! I think it would be relevant to me? I have strong disagreements with Tyler, but I still respect him a good amount, and him saying that he has considered this question a good amount and has arrived at a specific answer would matter a good amount to me.
And he hasn’t told me such a thing, and my honest best guess is that actually his relationship to my work is more like “I am pretty glad you are building a bunch of the modern internet intellectual discourse and are running a bunch of cool events where people are clearly thinking better, though I am kind of worried about the weird super wrong stuff you all believe about AI and it all feels a bit cultish”, or something. If he was like “nah, what you are doing is super harmful”, I would care about that!
But presumably you would care on the assumption that if Cowen had considered the question a good amount and concluded that what you are doing is super harmful, it would be because he came up with a more substantive objection than “it all feels a bit cultish”? You’ve already taken into account that some people think it all feels a bit cultish.
I’m saying that Shulman already took arguments against investing in AI capabilities into account before he decided to work for Situational Awareness. Yudkowsky’s disapproval would only matter to him insofar as it reflected objections that he hadn’t already “priced in.” Sorry if that wasn’t already clear due to my inexact analogy.
No, it would be because independently of his exact reasons, I would update on his overall assessment on consideration. Human reasoning is illegible and complicated and I do not generally feel comfortable considering the value from people’s conclusions screened off just because their justification sounds dumb or trite to me.
Aschenbrenner is the face of the fund, which is named “Situational Awareness LP” after his famous essay, and he’s never identified or particularly associated with the rationalists, so I think Eliezer’s primarily going off of that. It’s accurate to say that Shulman has historically been in rationalist scene, but also I think he’s spent a great deal of his career in the EA scene (working with OpenPhil), and EAs would claim him as their own (i.e. many would call him a great EA, which they wouldn’t with Eliezer, Gwern, Zvi, etc), so it’s not inaccurate to call him an EA.
I hope Eliezer has let Shulman know that he’s lost a lot of respect in Eliezer’s eyes and done terrible things, but I think that given Shulman’s intentionally low profile, it would be somewhat rude to do it as loudly as when talking about Situational Awareness LP (e.g. which has an article about it in the WSJ, but whose article does not mention Shulman).
You think Carl doesn’t already know that?
I’m not sure you’re modeling how uncompelling moral disapproval is to people who have their own considered views on a topic (as Carl does on the machine intelligence transition and how to intervene on it) rather than deferring to the same authorities that you do. Imagine if Tyler Cowen told you that by choosing to work at Lightcone Infrastructure, you’ve lost a lot of respect in his eyes and done terrible things. Not convincing, right?
I would like to know that! I think it would be relevant to me? I have strong disagreements with Tyler, but I still respect him a good amount, and him saying that he has considered this question a good amount and has arrived at a specific answer would matter a good amount to me.
And he hasn’t told me such a thing, and my honest best guess is that actually his relationship to my work is more like “I am pretty glad you are building a bunch of the modern internet intellectual discourse and are running a bunch of cool events where people are clearly thinking better, though I am kind of worried about the weird super wrong stuff you all believe about AI and it all feels a bit cultish”, or something. If he was like “nah, what you are doing is super harmful”, I would care about that!
But presumably you would care on the assumption that if Cowen had considered the question a good amount and concluded that what you are doing is super harmful, it would be because he came up with a more substantive objection than “it all feels a bit cultish”? You’ve already taken into account that some people think it all feels a bit cultish.
I’m saying that Shulman already took arguments against investing in AI capabilities into account before he decided to work for Situational Awareness. Yudkowsky’s disapproval would only matter to him insofar as it reflected objections that he hadn’t already “priced in.” Sorry if that wasn’t already clear due to my inexact analogy.
No, it would be because independently of his exact reasons, I would update on his overall assessment on consideration. Human reasoning is illegible and complicated and I do not generally feel comfortable considering the value from people’s conclusions screened off just because their justification sounds dumb or trite to me.