[Max_Limelihood]

This is a perfectly reasonable concern/criticism and one that plenty of EAs make. Going off funding, which is overwhelmingly directed towards global health and development, it’s probably one that most of them agree with. It also aligns with my experience talking to EAs, who mostly don’t work in or donate to AI.

But this is a criticism about effectiveness made within an EA framework. It assumes the thing we want to do is maximize the amount of good we do with our resources, and provides rational arguments for why AI won’t do that.

The AI folks think their cause is the one that does the most good, and they have rational arguments for that position. That’s why they’re considered part of the EA movement (despite not fitting in with the original vision).

That also means we have to listen and provide counterarguments before we reject their position. What we definitely shouldn’t do is write them off as “neckbeards” just because they’re working in tech and have unusual concerns. That’s how you end up writing off some 1930s physicist worried about the existential risk of nuclear fission weapons as some “Weird neckbeard nerd.”