Effective Altruism & the Real Critique
Get behind the headlines!
True to the title of my newsletter, sometimes a Daily post will turn out to be truly Inchoate. This is one. I have in mind to follow a sort of general plan in writing about trying to be a good human in the Anthropocene. But on any given day, the pressure of events may get the better of me.
Today’s digression isn’t irrelevant to my core topic, but I admit I am motivated to write primarily by becoming irritated at recent news headlines surrounding Effective Altruism, and how it’s wrapped up with the drama at OpenAI over the firing and rehiring of Sam Altman, as well as (a bit earlier) the debacle of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF).
Here are some representative media takes (I’m sorry about the paywall on the WSJ).
How Effective Altruism Split Silicon Valley—and Fueled the Blowup at OpenAI - WSJ
Sam Altman’s Second Coming Sparks New Fears of the AI Apocalypse | WIRED
Why I Ran Away from Philosophy Because of Sam Bankman-Fried - Honest Broker
The idea seems to be that AI power brokers are battling it out over what to make of AGI (artificial general intelligence) as either an extremely risky proposition, potentially destructive to the human race, or an incredibly lucrative investment with absurd market potential.
Effective Altruism advocates, who are apparently ubiquitous in Silicon Valley, have now lost this round, advocating as they have for undue levels of AI precaution — or for having the wrong kinds of motives all the way around (SBF).
Blame Game
I’m certainly no insider regarding the philosophical impact Effective Altruism is having on the tech jet set. It’s just incredibly over-simplified and superficial to blame Effective Altruism as The Evil Force behind all the trauma going on. There’s an utter lack of any deeper philosophical attention to EA as a contemporary application of utilitarianism, which is an ethical philosophy that’s been around for a long time.
Effective Altruism, as an organization, has been in action for a couple decades and is concerned about a good many other issues than AI. Its philosophical roots in utilitarianism align it with a highly influential modern philosophy that also has many other well-known applications — perhaps most notably Peter Singer’s on animal liberation. Utilitarianism has been debated and put into practice for at least a couple centuries by such influential theorists-cum-social activists as Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, notably in Mill’s case towards suffrage for women.
Mill was convinced that the moral and intellectual advancement of humankind would result in greater happiness for everybody. He asserted that the higher pleasures of the intellect yielded far greater happiness than the lower pleasure of the senses. He conceived of human beings as morally and intellectually capable of being educated and civilised. Mill believed everyone should have the right to vote, with the only exceptions being barbarians and uneducated people. (Wikipedia)
However many of the Silicon Valley kids are enamored of EA, however heatedly Ted Goia of Honest Broker excoriates his Oxford experience, I would have liked to see, in all this debate, at least some reference to better primary sources.
Such as:
The 80,000 Hours website, established by the EA folks, to inspire people to careers focused on trying to do good in the world.
The Effective Altruism website, which offers a thought-proving Handbook covering their general philosophy that, yes, also includes a pertinent section on the risks of AI.
One could have done, even further, with more discernment into the deeper history of utilitarianism, going back not only a couple centuries to Bentham and Mill, but through the entire history of western philosophy.
Utilitarianism is one of the most powerful and persuasive approaches to normative ethics in the history of philosophy. Though not fully articulated until the 19th century, proto-utilitarian positions can be discerned throughout the history of ethical theory.
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The History of Utilitarianism)
Not to mention… what does one do with a lot of money, if you’d like to use it towards the best possible ends, to get the most “bang for your buck”? Is it not a legitimate question? What charities do you give to, and why?
If one had billions, it’s not far-fetched at all that one would (should!) try to find out which problems are not only practically solvable but, if solved, would make the most impact for greatest good. A world free of malaria, perhaps?
Valid Criticism
Of course! There are entirely valid criticisms of utilitarianism. Two obvious statements of the “problem” come to mind.
The trolley problem, which is awfully hypothetical to my mind, but it has surely captured the attention of analytic philosophers. Here we have “a scenario in which a runaway tram or trolley is on course to collide with and kill a number of people down the track, but a driver or bystander can intervene and divert the vehicle to kill just one person on a different track.” (Wikipedia) What would you do?
Dostoevsky’s “Rebellion,” which delves far deeper into the problem of evil and matters of theodicy. If you’ve never read Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, especially his profound literary and philosophical chapters “Rebellion” and “Grand Inquisitor,” you should, right now, asap. It is impossible to do them justice in a summary here.
I am myself by no means a utilitarian, partly because of the power of Ivan’s arguments in Dostoevsky’s novel! — But even these objections can’t be the end of the story, because a quite different outlook, that of Ivan’s brother Alyosha, wins out in the novel, though it escapes the bounds of the rational.
The Odd Thing
The truly odd thing about blaming Effective Altruism for Sam Altman’s ouster is that usually utilitarians are blamed for sacrificing something they shouldn’t for the sake of a supposedly “greater good.” They’re blamed for doing something, not preventing something. They’re not known for being on the constraining end of a potential bargain.
What we might perhaps be seeing here, then, is that ethical worries or constraints (of any kind whatsoever) are being happily sacrificed to the overwhelming power of market forces: the financial “greater good” of those involved?
No doubt there is at play also the unstoppable curiosity, the irresistible urge of brilliant human beings, to unleash powers they know they have little idea how to control.
When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb.
(J. Robert Oppenheimer)
The Real Benefits
As to the genuine extent of the risk of AI (or AGI, if it’s possible), I don’t have the competence to say anything worthwhile.
What does seem clear is that there is clearly tremendous benefit (utility) in developing special (as opposed to general) AI. Perhaps we’re invested somewhat in the wrong places.
Andrew Ng, founder of Coursera and DeepLearning.ai, has both the requisite experience and a genuine attunement to the ethical issues. He is, in fact, optimistic about AI and is an advocate for the “democratization of AI, allowing its benefits to permeate industries beyond just tech.” (AI is the New Electricity: Insights from Dr. Andrew Ng - UC Berkeley Sutardja Center)
There is no reason not to be looking out for clear and consequentialist benefits from advancing technology in truly promising directions.
Everybody needs to take a deep breath and step back from this media storm — and go back to reading better sources than current headlines. And to thinking carefully through the true philosophical dilemmas at hand.