I think there are issues like: high-level actions don’t screen off intent or models, and adverse selection. That is, I think that a pledge to donate some amount to “safety causes” doesn’t constrain the impact at all. It could be accelerating capabilities, increasing or decreasing alignability of systems, and so on.
What is the purpose of the pledge? It could be: (a) to counter normalization of deviance, (b) to communicate trustworthiness to others or (c) to make it easier to resist internal pressures. I don’t think an offset achieves any of these.
The purpose of the pledge could be (d) make sure that the pledger is doing good by their lights. But in the absence of (a), (b) and (c), that person should just take actions that they judge to be good, and the pledge is unhelpful.
The only one that I think would meet (c) and make it much easier to resist internal pressures, would be to commit to burn basically everything you earn over ~$100k.
(“burn”, a word which here means “donate to a random ineffective charity”, which is how I personally burn money)
If you’re donating it to organization you think are doing good inthe world, then you have motive to keep earning lots of money, and doing whatever the company asks of you. If you’re burning it, then the massive financial and status incentive is massively reduced.
I think there are issues like: high-level actions don’t screen off intent or models, and adverse selection. That is, I think that a pledge to donate some amount to “safety causes” doesn’t constrain the impact at all. It could be accelerating capabilities, increasing or decreasing alignability of systems, and so on.
What is the purpose of the pledge? It could be: (a) to counter normalization of deviance, (b) to communicate trustworthiness to others or (c) to make it easier to resist internal pressures. I don’t think an offset achieves any of these.
The purpose of the pledge could be (d) make sure that the pledger is doing good by their lights. But in the absence of (a), (b) and (c), that person should just take actions that they judge to be good, and the pledge is unhelpful.
The only one that I think would meet (c) and make it much easier to resist internal pressures, would be to commit to burn basically everything you earn over ~$100k.
(“burn”, a word which here means “donate to a random ineffective charity”, which is how I personally burn money)
If you’re donating it to organization you think are doing good inthe world, then you have motive to keep earning lots of money, and doing whatever the company asks of you. If you’re burning it, then the massive financial and status incentive is massively reduced.