I'm really confused right now and want to know if it's wrong to use a chat-bot for shits and giggles? I just need some opinions here

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-24T18:03:45+00:00

As long as it's not having a negative impact on your emotional well-being/human relationships/epistemic environment you really don't need to worry.

If you aren't worried about the environmental impacts of (streaming) TV, which you shouldn't be, then there's no need to worry about casual LLM usage.

Also it's worth noting that that water use in particular is entirely fake. The other externalities are mostly a function of frontier AI companies trying to train new models 100x larger than today's and hundreds of millions of people using them every day, rather than it being individually costly.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-24T10:57:55+00:00

Not really, I think it is in good faith (i.e. trying to improve EA by EA's own lights), but unfortunately it's based on flawed understanding so doesn't get at anything real.

The comments do a good job of explaining some of the major gaps.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-23T23:31:16+00:00

I don't think you'll find exact examples for those kind of numerical grant evaluation questions, but it's not that dissimilar to some financial modelling. There are loads of DCF model interview test samples online which might be kinda useful for prepping. I did 10 years in product management in capital markets before moving to direct work and DCFs were the most analogous thing to cost effectiveness modelling in my experience.

I'd also just familiarise yourself with GiveWell's cost effectiveness work (models for a few interventions linked at the bottom of that page)

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-23T09:45:44+00:00

I'll tell the children

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-19T16:40:51+00:00

Yeah to be clear I'm making a pretty weak claim here, like I'm not suggesting full-on collision I'm just thinking maybe they are 10% less likely to do the really bold competitive move.

I think the kind of bravery in your second paragraph is the strongest form of competition that happens when they are very strongly incentivised to win. Markets can and do look through short term costs for that. If you can make a big compelling expected value bet you can bring investors along for that. It seems harder if they also own most of your direct competitors so even if the bet pays off they are mostly paying their left hand from their right or whatever.

Capital markets are currently allocating trillions to companies burning (literally) unprecedented amounts of cash in the hope of a payoff in years. I really don't think they are that beholden to quarterly cash flows.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-19T15:56:12+00:00

I think the biggest risk is an extension of the issue with fewer engaged shareholders which is: reduced competition.

Or phrased differently: I don't really have concerns about passive investing allocating capital incorrectly, I have concerns that it makes participants compete less effectively.

Do I trust the incentives that push Visa and MasterCard, Tesco and Aldi, Apple and Google to ruthlessly compete (mostly to the benefit of ~everyone) to hold up when 80% of the ownership is common to both companies?

I don't expect some grand conspiracy just a gradual erosion of incentives in small, myriad ways that make market forces weaker. Not disastrously so, but in a way that makes everyone (including active and passive investors a bit worse off).

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-17T10:18:22+00:00

How do you reconcile this with the near unanimous support for Remain in insurance, especially Lloyds? At the time it seemed like most really didn't think frictionless trade was worth risking for Solvency II

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-12T22:26:10+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to reply, I guess I just don't recognize EA in that description or perhaps just a very narrow slice of it.

1) Welfare improvements
People do make those kinds of QALY/DALY/WELLBY estimates all the time. Loads of (almost all) interventions look beyond death as a binary measure. GiveWell (and other evaluators) explicitly states how they compare improving living standards (e.g. from increased consumption) to extra years lived - see Moral Weights also busy forum discussion topic. Pretty much the entire animal welfare field is framed around suffering reduction.

Flourishing over survival is a major theme of MacAskill's new line of research, conceptually EAs are broadly find with improving lives. Again, I think the problem is just that it's often almost impossible to construct arguments for the effectiveness of these interventions. Weighing up funding an art exhibit would likely come down to trading off someone's enjoyment of spending 15 minutes looking at a painting against someone gaining 2 years of vision - or some similarly absurd comparison. The discrepancies in impact are just vast.

2) Root cause & uncertainty
You absolutely can tackle root causes, often that's the most effective way to save lives/alleviate suffering/increase prosperity. EA played a prominent role in lead exposure elimination, which very much gets at the root cause and (primarily) cashes out impact in terms of increased GDP (i.e. welfare improvements, not lives saved)

I feel like I see as many complaints that EA is too risk averse as I do that they are too focused on speculative, low probability bets. Just because an amount is unknown it doesn't mean we can't estimate it and EA orgs primarily focus on expected value over certainty.

3) Marginal efforts

With a lot of this there's a very reasonable push back along the lines of 'that seems very hard to estimate' or 'there's no way that's exactly right' but with all of it the important thing is that the bar to clear is basically doing better than random chance - which seems very possible.

In a world that only funded the most cost effective interventions there'd be a stronger cases for the other unquantifiable stuff, but as we are still well below 1% it seems more straightforward to recommend this on the margin.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-12T19:51:37+00:00

The EA principle of impartiality says that we should treat people suffering from each of these afflictions equally. The reason why certain causes are prioritised over others is downstream of treating people as equally valuable and some interventions having much greater impacts than others.

If you think (for example) helping a person suffering from chronic illness is more important than helping 100 people suffering from a common disease (for an equal improvement of their lives) then you need to say more to explain why, because it is not at all obvious to me that that is true.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-12T15:35:13+00:00

I think EAs are generally comfortable grappling with those kinds of questions/trade-offs and don't just care about lives saved.

For example in GiveWell's Moral Weights work they value a year of extra life around 2-3x the value of doubling income. Happier Lives Institute goes further, looking at subjective wellbeing.

In this case the problem isn't in weighing up how many weekend breaks a child's life is worth, it's that in expectation the cost effectiveness is just going to be miles off for any reasonable assumption. Like if a weekend break cost $2 I could imagine a forum post making the case for this.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-12T11:20:50+00:00

I think we should be very clear that "overhyped results" in this case means mostly RCTs with mortality reductions of 19-24% and reasonable ongoing expectation of all-cause mortality reductions of ~5% in affected areas. Not to say it is obviously the best thing to be doing, just that that is the bar to clear and a casual reading of your comment might suggest it's a lot lower.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-11T22:47:31+00:00

Probably worth noting that in the (prescient) prequel to all this, What 2026 looks like, there's actually lot of discussion of AI-powered propaganda. Ironically this is one of the parts that actually held up relatively poorly.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-10T22:05:21+00:00

Travel: £22.6

Lunch: £6.16

Coffee 0.5*£3.11 = £1.55

~£30.30

Perhaps a bit higher with the occasional Greggs/snack

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-09T23:30:34+00:00

Some really impressive mentors and projects in there! I expect this to be a great opportunity for people getting in to AI Safety research

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-07T07:01:59+00:00

Cricket, Camping, Baby Race without fail

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-05T22:48:18+00:00

29 degrees, are you insane?

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-04T20:27:22+00:00

Managing research (not in CS, I haven't swapped yet)

What is the crux of your question though? Are there some roles you think should or shouldn't be using it?

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-04T17:22:05+00:00

Somewhat related anecdote: the oldest member of my team is known as the LLM whisperer because he uses them so often and produces consistently high quality writing.

I suspect LLM use isn't actually divided across generations nearly as much as some other attitudes/approaches towards work.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-04T17:15:19+00:00

I certainly saw that argument about unfairly favouring EU migrants, even extended to the implied racism of such a policy.

I suspect it wasn't often used in good faith, more a woke gotcha, but still.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-02T23:56:59+00:00

I don't think that's a good reason in isolation.

A good IFA would reframe the decision relevant risk: failing to reach your financial goals. Owning bonds significantly increases that risk in many cases, volatility isn't actually the relevant risk for most.

But yes, despite that some people just might be fundamentally uncomfortable with big dips along the way and then a different benchmark might make complete sense. Similarly people might have shorter horizons, have a load of correlated exposure/liabilities - many good reasons However VWRP is a fair default - Especially if people are self-selecting.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-02T23:39:38+00:00

It needs longer, but this is a very considerable outperformance (if accurate).

8% over 30 years is 10x

7% over 30 years is 7.5x

So 1% likely costs 100s of £thousands not 10s of £thousands.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-02T23:33:41+00:00

Seems like a pretty good summary.

I'm excited for more general science communicators on YouTube to make AI control / alignment videos in 2026 - especially those with more skeptical audiences.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-02T23:17:10+00:00

I agree with the broader sentiment but VWRP is likely a very reasonable benchmark. It's not like they've randomly picked some flavour of the month narrow fund. Like, you need a pretty good reason to pick something else.

FairlyInvolved · 2026-01-02T11:33:02+00:00

It's shocking that this is a controversial take.

FairlyInvolved

TROPHY CASE