Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

https://www.futureofhumanityinstitute.org

by rdl • 2 years ago

207 285 2 years ago

futureofhumanityinstitute.org

mikece• 2 years ago

Possibly because the future of humanity itself is in question?

"We're not going to make it, are we? Humans, I mean." --John Connor

JohnKemeny• 2 years ago

Or because Nick Bostrom is a hack. Together with Max Tegmark. Not to mention Ray Kurzweil.

Initially wrote wrong surname.

patrulo2• 2 years ago

elaborate?

FabHK• 2 years ago

You mean Max Tegmark?

I mean, some of their ideas are way out there, and obviously if not tempered can lead to bad consequences (e.g. SBF/FTX). But a hack?

helboi417• 2 years ago

I really did not like Max Tegmark's AI book. It felt like bad science fiction.

esafak2• 2 years ago

I have not read any paper by Tegmark that seems hacky: https://arxiv.org/search/cs?searchtype=author&query=Tegmark,...

Could you point to some?

goatlover3• 2 years ago

Would you also say Sean Carroll is a hack for his strong support of the MWI?

patrulo2• 2 years ago

Curious as to why they didn't explore independence, moving from Oxford to a separate non-profit org. Getting funded doesn't seem impossible given the amount of high-profile e/acc advocates.

rdl• 2 years ago

I think they're the enemies of e/acc, and their EA background (due to FTX, SBF, etc.) taints them a bit when it comes to fundraising.

CorruptedArc• 2 years ago

Not to mention the "big picture" EAs did damage when put in charge of the money FTX was doling out. They had people who'd been funding organizations that would feed, cloth, and medicate people move their funding to "existential problems" like AI and climate science. While I won't argue the value of those, vague theoreticals are arguably more commonly tacticaled than those on the ground trying to help with active issues.

cad31• 2 years ago

By "enemies" you mean the sinking boat that e/acc people jumped out of, giving way for the next scam.

constantcrying2• 2 years ago

I think you are confusing EA and e/acc. EA was about billionaires defrauding the population who entrusted them with their money to give away to whatever cause was deemed best by the current "scientific" consensus in EA. Causes can include things like the suffering of fish or AI ending the known universe.

e/acc is about doing capitalism so hard so that AI will solve every problem.

esafak2• 2 years ago

That's not true. sbf was about that, but EA is not. Are there other cases of EA fraud?

karma_pharmer6• 2 years ago

For a nonprofit research group with no patents/IP/etc, simply starting over with the same people is actually a better strategy than trying to "move". Nothing is lost (no capital, equipment, etc) and you don't have to deal with entanglements with the previous institution.

gizajob4• 2 years ago

Because without institutional funding, one's sci-fi has to appeal to a mass audience to pay its way.

sinuhe69• 2 years ago

What an irony! The Bostrom Institute has to close in the midst of the spectacular rise of AI, and the all-important questions of AI risks and human value alignment are more hotly debated than ever.

I hope that Bostrom and his colleagues will continue and deepen their research, because humanity needs such insights now more than ever.

EarthAmbassador• 2 years ago

How does one research and generate insights for what does not exist yet? Is there a framework? At SXSW this year, there were a couple of talks about forecasting, as a tool for futurism, but where ethics are concerned, I’ve not seen a good template. Maybe all if this is obvious, yet I’m curious so I’m asking.

skeeter2020• 2 years ago

I'm not expert and struggled to read Bostrom's Super Intelligence, but my interpretation was it started with a lot of broad, hand-wavy factors & historical interpetations, layered on some pretty tenious projections as inevitable and wanked off with deep thought experiments. I get this sort of open-ended exploration has value, but I'm not sold on it's "prioritized value" when compared with other areas and directions.

mitthrowaway23• 2 years ago

How does one research and generate insights for what does not exist yet?

It's Zeno's paradox of research: we cannot think about what does not already exist, therefore nothing new can ever be brought into existence!

mise_en_place2• 2 years ago

Is FHI even needed anymore? His ideas clearly won and took hold of a large group of people. AI doomerism is the default stance most people have on AI. e/acc makes up a tiny fraction of popular discourse today.

beepbooptheory• 2 years ago

Geez if this is what it all looks like for AI to be unpopular I can't even imagine what its going to look like when everyone is actually into AI.

Maro2• 2 years ago

This 2023 incident around founder Nick Bostrom may have something to do with it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Bostrom#1996_email_contro...

From the wikipedia article:

In January 2023, Bostrom issued an apology for a 1996 email where he had stated that he thought "Blacks are more stupid than whites", and where he also used the word "niggers" in a description of how he thought this statement might be perceived by others. The apology, posted on his website, stated that "the invocation of a racial slur was repulsive" and that he "completely repudiate[d] this disgusting email". In his apology, he wrote “I think it is deeply unfair that unequal access to education, nutrients and basic healthcare leads to inequality in social outcomes, including sometimes disparities in skills and cognitive capacity.”

Edit: also adding the second paragraph from Wikipedia to avoid accusations of smearing:

In January 2023, Oxford University told The Daily Beast, "The University and Faculty of Philosophy is currently investigating the matter but condemns in the strongest terms possible the views this particular academic expressed in his communications." In August 2023, the investigation concluded (according to a letter Bostrom posted on his website) that "we do not consider [Bostrom] to be a racist or that [he holds] racist views, and we consider that the apology [he] posted in January 2023 was sincere."

Another member of this institute was effective altruist William MacAskill, who has appeared in media in 2023 in this context: "Sam Bankman-Fried and Will MacAskill weren't just philosophical allies. They were old friends."

https://time.com/6262810/sam-bankman-fried-effective-altruis...

From the OP:

In late 2023, the Faculty of Philosophy decided that the contracts of the remaining FHI staff would not be renewed. On 16 April 2024, the Institute was closed down.

I'm just speculating, but it stands to reason that the Institute became a PR net negative for Oxford (or this specific Faculty).

busterarm6• 2 years ago

FHI/Bostrom's relationship with the university was damaged for years before the apology email.

They'd already frozen funding and hiring years earlier which means their issues go back even further than that.

malfist3• 2 years ago

Wow, that's disgusting

letmeinhere• 2 years ago

They may also be insolvent due to FTX bankruptcy clawing back grants.

helboi417• 2 years ago

Even the apology is sort of terrible. I'm not sure that I ever want it implied that black people have lower "cognitive capacity", whether or not it's said with recognition of social factors outside of our control. Social outcomes =/= cognitive capacity. And the causal factor here is poverty > race.

s1artibartfast3• 2 years ago

Why do you jump to that conclusion? It certainly isn't implied by a literal and direct interpretation of the statement. Somewhat ironic because the quote is talking about the value of being direct.

exo-pla-net7• 2 years ago

This is a smear taken out of context. What Bostrom actually had to say is both accurate and mild:

“I have always liked the uncompromisingly objective way of thinking and speaking: the more counterintuitive and repugnant a formulation, the more it appeals to me given that it is logically correct,” the quoted excerpt begins. “Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true.

“But recently I have begun to believe that I won’t have much success with most people if I speak like that. They would think that I were a ‘racist’: that I _disliked_ black people and thought it is fair if blacks are treated badly. I don’t. It’s just that based on what I have read, I think it is probable that black people have a lower average IQ than mankind in general, and I think that IQ is highly correlated with what we normally mean by ‘smart’ and ‘stupid’. I may be wrong about the facts, but that is what the sentence means for me. For most people, however, the sentence seems to be synonymous with: ‘I hate those bloody n------!!!!”

busterarm6• 2 years ago

It also leaves out that the university investigated and came to the seemingly-rare conclusion that the controversial statement didn't indicate that he's a racist.

myko• 2 years ago

I don't think this helps his case, but I do appreciate seeing the email in question

chkaloon• 2 years ago

Bryan Caplan should take a clue from his bit of introspection.

Maro2• 2 years ago

I have no agenda for or against Nick Bostrom. It's a full paragraph quote from the Wikipedia article, with a link.

helboi417• 2 years ago

Thats.... still racist? Why does he think black people have a lower IQ? Nigerian immigrants to the US are some of the most successful immigrants. Like... black people just do not have lower IQs and to say so is considered very dangerous rhetoric for a reason. The reason we even have pervasive belief that black people are stupider is because it was convenient rhetoric for the colonial powers pillaging Africa and treating black people as subhuman cattle. It's not a claim based on fact, nor is it a benign thing to say.

...IQ tests are also wildly flawed measures of intelligence anyway, but let's not even get into that.

shafyy• 2 years ago

Sorry, but how does this make it better? If something, it makes it worse. And you describing his statement as "accurate and mild" is also not great.

MisterBastahrd• 2 years ago

It isn't a smear. His qualifying remarks indicate that he's either too stupid, arrogant, or bigoted to understand or care how context works, and thus has no business running a hot dog stand, much less an institute. Even disregarding that, publicly revealing his thoughts and framing them in such a fashion shows he has no common sense.

woopsn• 2 years ago

What Bostrom said is that he completely repudiates these remarks and that they were disgusting. Leave it at that.

beezlebroxxxxxx• 2 years ago

An academic would need to be incredibly stupid to think that that's a good thing to say in writing or out loud. The idea that you can "just" say these things is almost entirely the purview of people who coincidentally just so happen to not say or refer to all of the contextual and explicative ideas around them, making pointing to IQ without them essentially meaningless at best and racist at worst.

It's also not really "accurate or mild", as Bostrom himself stated in his apology for the email that:

I completely repudiate this disgusting email from 26 years ago. It does not accurately represent my views, then or now. The invocation of a racial slur was repulsive. I immediately apologized for writing it at the time, within 24 hours; and I apologize again unreservedly today. I recoil when I read it and reject it utterly.

satvikpendem• 2 years ago

How is this "both accurate and mild?" If anything, it makes Bostrom seem even more racist, harkening back to the 20th century notion of scientific racism, which, regardless of whether you put a pseudoscientific spin on it, is still racism.

IncreasePosts4• 2 years ago

I wonder if these people ever paused to consider they aren't as smart as they think they are, if they're just figuring out some basics of human communication in their mid 20s that my 8 year old has known for years.

itronitron2• 2 years ago

The additional context you provide suggests that the smear was taken out of context in order to hide the fact that the smear was in fact covering a skid mark over a shit stain.

daveguy3• 2 years ago

Bostrom's original statement was not remotely accurate or mild. The statement, "Take for example the following sentence: Blacks are more stupid than whites. I like that sentence and I think it is true." -- is a classic example of racism. It is racist to the core. Not only that, Bostrom knew at the time racism like that would make things more difficult for him and he was correct. Sometimes cancel culture is deserved. At least he eventually apologized for it.

throw7• 2 years ago

I suppose we could also say IQ highly correlates with social ineptitude. Who could've known people wouldn't like you if you made repugnant statements... surely not 'smart' people!

mise_en_place2• 2 years ago

Most people are not ready to have an honest discussion about the correlation between race and IQ. It sadly gets muddied by various political ministrations. But it seems like a genuine effect that should be studied more. If we truly want equality of opportunity, we must understand what is causing certain races to be on the left side of the normal distribution. Is it nutrition? Social status? Lack of parenting? A combination of these?

Bostrom's only crime there was hoping for an honest, curious, and intellectual discussion.

arduanika13• 2 years ago

The philosopher David Thorstad keeps a blog with critiques of EA and related ideas. His writing strikes me as fairly patient and in good faith. (Or at least, it's more measured than some of my own comments on this thread!)

He wrote this good dissection of the Bostrom email controversy, and why the apology doesn't cut it:

https://ineffectivealtruismblog.com/2023/01/12/off-series-th...

That said -- it did happen way back in the 90's. There has to be a place for forgiveness, even for imperfect people offering imperfect apologies. My sense is that there's plenty of other things to criticize that are more recent and more central to this general school of thought.

pessimizer• 2 years ago

This context makes it worse. I was imagining a bunch of different framings that would make it sound thoughtful, but I've literally heard the same thing from Klansmen in Arkansas. Literally, not figuratively.

That last sentence is a symptom of people thinking that the only important issue is whether they're good people or not. He's saying that saying dogs are stupider than humans is not the same as hating dogs. Who cares what he hates? The question is who he hires, and who he gives the benefit of the doubt to. Not hiring dogs isn't hating dogs either.

karma_pharmer6• 2 years ago

Yeah but this does not explain

Starting in 2020, the Faculty imposed a freeze on fundraising and hiring

(note the date)

More likely the freeze and the smear have a common cause, rather than one causing the other.

ctxc• 2 years ago

On an unrelated note - my HN client UI breaks since the domain name is long xD

optimalsolver• 2 years ago

EDIT: Got my “future of” institutes mixed up.

rmbyrro• 2 years ago

Or maybe some god scientist made an observation and the probability function collapsed in this non-funded state

complianceowl• 2 years ago

I'm literally laughing out loud at my desk right now XD

dotsam• 2 years ago

Tegmark’s institution is the Future of Life Institute, this is the Oxford Future of Humanity Institute.

Tegmark’s institute is well-funded, apparently largely due to a big crypto donation from Vitalik Buterin. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/25/a-665m-crypto-war-c...

swyx• 2 years ago

why do people not like Max Tegmark? he was kind of a rockstar at NeurIPS

exo-pla-net7• 2 years ago

Seems the incompetent and curiously hostile Philosophy Faculty at Oxford killed FHI.

While FHI had achieved significant academic and policy impact, the final years were affected by a gradual suffocation by Faculty bureaucracy. The flexible, fast-moving approach of the institute did not function well with the rigid rules and slow decision-making of the surrounding organization. (One of our administrators developed a joke measurement unit, “the Oxford”. 1 Oxford is the amount of work it takes to read and write 308 emails. This is the actual administrative effort it took for FHI to have a small grant disbursed into its account within the Philosophy Faculty so that we could start using it - after both the funder and the University had already approved the grant.) Starting in 2020, the Faculty imposed a freeze on fundraising and hiring. Unfortunately, this led to the eventual loss of lead researchers and especially the promising and diverse cohort of junior researchers, who have gone on to great things in the years since. While building an impressive alumni network and ecosystem of new nonprofits, these departures severely reduced the Institute. In late 2023, the Faculty of Philosophy announced that the contracts of the remaining FHI staff would not be renewed. On 16 April 2024, the Institute was closed down.

goodcanadian2• 2 years ago

Curious use of the word faculty . . . I would say the problem is the administration and bureaucracy and not the faculty (which usually refers to the academic staff). I guess they mean the word in the sense of the administrative unit of the university. Regardless, this is not a problem confined to Oxford; it seems to have proliferated throughout academia in the last couple of decades. The sheer amount of utter bullshit is mind boggling; I figure about 1 in 10 people actually do useful work while the other 9 conspire to make that person's life more difficult. Of course, industry is hardly any better . . .

hollerith• 2 years ago

Why not assume that the OP knows the definition of the word "faculty" and that when the OP writes, "suffocation by Faculty bureaucracy", he meant suffocation by academic staff?

polygamous_bat• 2 years ago

Surely it was Oxford, the institute older than most nations, being incompetent, and nothing to do with the easy money tap called Sam Bankman Fraud being thrown in jail. Oxford just seems like a easy scapegoat as they can’t just say “our biggest donor is in jail for the foreseeable future and we have no money left because we used it to buy a mansion [0]”

[0] https://twitter.com/paulmainwood/status/1600433194691502081

levocardia• 2 years ago

Center for Effective Altruism is different from FHI

arduanika13• 2 years ago

Everybody who disagrees with me is incompetent.

sgift• 2 years ago

You obviously missed this part: > This is the actual administrative effort it took for FHI to have a small grant disbursed into its account within the Philosophy Faculty so that we could start using it - after both the funder and the University had already approved the grant.

They make quite a clear difference between Oxford (i.e. the University) and the faculty.

karma_pharmer6• 2 years ago

They froze the institute "starting in 2020", three years before anybody suspected SBF was anything other than the Great Tech Messiah.

FTX didn't even get its initial funding until the last months of 2019.

I mean sure, FTX might be a stain on FHI's reputation now, but it certainly can't have been the initial cause of these actions by Oxford. The dates just don't work.

setgree• 2 years ago

I think that either the link has changed or that the statement has changed, because the statement I'm reading is very different from your quote "in both content and deliverance" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UGtlUMMkOU))

exo-pla-net7• 2 years ago

The quote is from their "Final Report, which is the first link in the submitted article.

johngossman6• 2 years ago

“It was to be free from almost all the tiresome restraints—“ red tape” was the word its supporters used—which have hitherto hampered research in this country.”

— That Hideous Strength: by C. S. Lewis (1943)

The book literally starts with a competition between Oxford and a fictional university about who gets to host a “trans-humanist” research organization.

johngossman6• 2 years ago

Bear with a digression. CS Lewis was a professor at Oxford. His novel “That Hideous Strength” is about an organization that wants to use science to save humanity.

“It’s a little fantastic to base one’s actions on a supposed concern for what’s going to happen millions of years hence; and you must remember that the other side would claim to be preserving humanity, too.”

— That Hideous Strength: (Space Trilogy, Book Three) (The Space Trilogy 3) by C. S. Lewis

Of course, it all goes very, very bad. The whole book can be read as a warning against what we now call transhumanism, obviously from a Christian perspective.

Given CS Lewis’s Oxford connection, I have always wondered if some of the faculty had their doubts about the FHI

n4r98• 2 years ago

I doubt that the philosophy faculty would take CS Lewis' opinion seriously into consideration. He was a decent storyteller, but not much of a philosopher.

busterarm6• 2 years ago

His work is often quietly cited by a handful of moral philosophers. In particular, The Discarded Image, anytime someone is writing about medieval philosophy.

Anyway, being a philosopher simply isn't what the guy did and academics are fairly dismissive without consideration anytime religion (and specifically Christian apologetics) gets in the mix.

dylan604• 2 years ago

How is that any different than deity of religion will save humanity as any more/less believable?

johngossman6• 2 years ago

Not defending it. Just think the parallels with the novel are amusing. John Gray has been arguing for years that humanism and transhumanism grew out of Christian millennialism

arduanika13• 2 years ago

At least Lewis admits it. For me, that goes a long way.

arduanika13• 2 years ago

While I do appreciate this reference and agree with CS Lewis here, I think it's a bit of a stretch to draw a connection between him and the present day Oxford philosophy faculty. He was a single don from nearly a century ago, who now really belongs to the canon at large rather than a single university. Perhaps the current faculty all hold some special reverence for him, but it seems more likely that modern mainstream philosophers (not only at Oxford) merely share with Lewis some basic grasp of common sense, which informs their skepticism of FHI and EA.

johngossman6• 2 years ago

I agree with you completely. And yet...I can't imagine at least some of them aren't aware of it, and it might have planted a seed. I could totally believe there was a faculty meeting and someone said: "Didn't CS Lewis write a book or two about this?" followed by laughter (some of it nervous). It's just so odd to me that out of all the universities in the world, FHI ended up at the place CS Lewis was when he wrote this book. I can pull quote after quote out of it, that if you don't know it was written in 1943, you would think he was parodying FHI and EA. Which really reflects that these two movements aren't that new.

stainablesteel2• 2 years ago

i'm honestly glad, there seems to be a lot of places that may as well be called "the institute of impending doom for all of humanity" and i just don't care for this fear-based grant entrenchment, it gets us nowhere. people who are pioneering the front lines of any technology understand risk better than people who write about it

mitthrowaway23• 2 years ago

people who are pioneering the front lines of any technology understand risk better than people who write about it

That's far from guaranteed, and we have a long history of lessons written in blood that says otherwise. The people pioneering a technology are going to be self-selected to be the most optimistic about its potential and the most dismissive of its negative impacts.

stainablesteel2• 2 years ago

this isn't chemistry in the 1800s this is computer science

neilv2• 2 years ago

The HN headline, "Future of Humanity Institute shuts down", sounds cynically funny, in context of current problems/challenges.

The grandiose name Oxford chose now sounds like they've determined the situation is hopeless.

jessriedel2• 2 years ago

"Oxford" did not choose the name

kikokikokiko• 2 years ago

By your definition no name ever was "chosen" by any corporation in history. Organizations are made of people, and when a new org inside the main org is named, it obviously was named by someone (or a committee). In the end, the "organization" choose the name, potato po-ta-to.

colechristensen3• 2 years ago

in context of current problems/challenges

People have been saying nonsense like this for as long as we have recorded history of people saying anything.

stronglikedan• 2 years ago

Nothing new under the sun

--Abraham Lincoln

wigster• 2 years ago

and everytime they do, they ARE closer to being correct

neilv2• 2 years ago

If you're not feeling the increasing dissatisfaction and worsening conditions that a lot of research reports, that's great for you, but I wouldn't call it nonsense.

laurex• 2 years ago

We've had recorded history of people saying things for less time than we've had a formal scientific method. Surely the accumulation of knowledge through our recording of people saying things carries some weight? It truly has not been that long in which great acceleration of climate conditions have become existential- though I suppose in the timelines of life on earth, the era of recorded human thoughts is itself minuscule.

ken47• 2 years ago

I agree with your sentiment. Every era has had its major challenges, and it's egocentric + myopic to say ours are the most important ever.

PeterStuer• 2 years ago

Seems at first glance to be the same type slippery eel org as the 'Future of Life Institute'. They seem to have far more in common under the covers than just similar sounding names.

Aromasin• 2 years ago

The full final report is well worth a read for those with time on their hands: https://www.futureofhumanityinstitute.org/s/FHI-Final-Report...

arduanika13• 2 years ago

Good riddance to these ideologues. It's a shame that the announcement shows no trace of remorse for the crimes they inspired (e.g. at FTX) or the lives that have been ruined by the cults to which they lent academic legitimacy. Instead, their demise is chalked up to some bland moaning about "administrative headwinds".

Realistically, we're probably only looking at a brief respite before they regroup under some other benevolent-sounding name. Be on the lookout for their next incarnation, and let's hope that Oxford won't repeat the mistake of allowing them to evangelize under the seal of a great university.

(Edit in response to causal's question below):

They legitimized longtermism and pseudo-rational AI panic, which transformed much of EA into an apocalyptic sect, with all the high-demand group dynamics that come with it. Their research created an air of urgency and expediency which, among other bad outcomes, inspired the devoted EAs at FTX to justify their crimes to themselves. These crimes resulted in privation and a few suicides for their innocent depositors. To this day, there are EAs who rationalize these crimes against their outgroup as not that bad, considering that the "Future of Humanity" is at stake.

You can look at the movement and find plenty of other negative effects of this urgency and expediency, but for me personally, the FTX crimes are what woke me up to the true nature of these hazardous ideas.

causal• 2 years ago

That's a lot of vague vitriol, what exactly did FHI do? Genuinely curious.

rurp• 2 years ago

It's quite a leap to assume that SBF only turned to a life of crime because the EA movement lured him into it.

There are legitimate criticisms of EA and I'm not personally a follower of the movement but your post comes off as way too generally dismissive. Many of the people involved seem to have good intentions and a lot of money has been donated to objectively good causes. The longtermism stuff is more squishy, but our society is pretty bad at dealing with certain types of existential risks and we could use more people thinking about solutions rather than less.

arduanika13• 2 years ago

to assume that SBF only turned to a life of crime because the EA movement lured him into it.

It's not an assumption. It's a matter of record, understood by anyone who knows the basics of the FTX saga. SBF is a lifelong utilitarian, and his co-conspirators were also committed EAs. Anyone who obscures that fact is abetting the campaign of obfuscation.

Many of the people involved seem to have good intentions

Yup. That includes Sam and his friends. How did that turn out?

a lot of money has been donated

To borrow your language, "it's quite a leap to assume" that anyone donated money just because EA lured them into it. How do we know they weren't going to behave altruistically in the absence of the movement?

Why is there an isolated demand for rigor when confronting the movement's adverse effects? Do you think that Sam is inherently a criminal, with ideology playing no role, whereas EA donors aren't inherently generous?

to objectively good causes

Fair enough. I will concede that there were a few of these. In some cases, early EA principles may have helped people arrive at these good ideas in a way that wouldn't have happened without the movement.

It's just that, I get annoyed when people dismiss the downsides, writing them off as aberrations or lone bad actors. And given the major flaws in the philosophy, it's hard to shake my suspicion that most of their longtermist explorations are worse than just "squishy". It seems quite plausible that they're doing more harm than good.

StressedDev2• 2 years ago

I really don't think you can blame Effective Alterism (EA) or these guy for FTX. FTX was a fraud and it occurred because Sam Bankman-Fried used customer money to prop up his failing investment company (Almeada Research). To be blunt he stole from his customers to try and prop up a failing business. He also lied, used customer money to fund a lavish lifestyle, used customer money to donate to political causes, etc.

Basically, I doubt Effective Altruism condoned stealing from people to prop up businesses, fund personal causes, and enrich oneself.

esailija• 2 years ago

Actually the belief that you're good or "doing altruism" is exactly the kind of thing that would cause a person to do such evil things.

If we take bible metaphorically it's pretty smart because believing you are a inherently unworthy sinner will actually encourage you to do good things instead of the opposite which just causes people to do evil things and virtue signal.

Basically "But we're the good guys" <- that's how you know who is truly evil.

arduanika13• 2 years ago

it occurred because Sam Bankman-Fried used customer money to...

This is a weird use of "because". You're saying roughly, "the fraud occurred because <the mechanics of the fraud>". That stuff is not why it occurred, it's how.

People do things for reasons.

fund a lavish lifestyle

More lavish than portrayed in his PR and parroted by EA leaders, but less lavish than a typical billionaire in his situation (to say nothing of a typical crypto billionaire!)

Spending some money on nice, convenient living for himself and his team is not inconsistent with longtermism. To use a CS term, it's analogous to the concept of amortization.

kvee• 2 years ago

Future of Humanity Final Report from Anders Sandberg here:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/660e95991cf0293c2463b...

and Google Doc version: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jgl2KqtiJ6lLkpoZ1I_VeniP...

zheninghuang• 2 years ago

I might be very biased:

- This report looks like it was put together in a week's time. - As an academic, I am sure the quality of the presentation is lower than that of 90% of the academic papers out there.

gizajob4• 2 years ago

Seems like they didn’t see it coming…

Vecr3• 2 years ago

They did, I read the report. Probably since 2020 or 2021 at the latest.

karma_pharmer6• 2 years ago

Starting in 2020, the Faculty imposed a freeze on fundraising and hiring. In late 2023, the Faculty of Philosophy decided that the contracts of the remaining FHI staff would not be renewed.

Can anybody offer insight into the reasons here? Obviously there is not going to be an objective answer to this question. And that is probably why the linked page does not try to give an answer.

I'm assuming lack of funding wasn't the problem, since they froze fundraising (if the inability to raise funds was the problem it is unlikely that they would have done this).

Edit: looks like he got smeared in January of 2023, but that doesn't explain the freeze starting three years earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40066352

williamtrask• 2 years ago

"Any organization embedded in a larger organization or community needs to invest to a certain degree in establishing the right kind of social relationships to maintain this embeddedness. Incentives must be aligned, and both parties must also recognize this alignment. We did not invest enough in university politics and sociality to form a long-term stable relationship with our faculty. There also needs to be an understanding of how to communicate across organizational communities. When epistemic and communicative practices diverge too much, misunderstandings proliferate. Several times we made serious missteps in our communications with other parts of the university because we misunderstood how the message would be received. Finding friendly local translators and bridgebuilders is important."

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/660e95991cf0293c2463b...

javajosh• 2 years ago

The real question is whether Mr. Beast can make compelling content about saving the Future of Humanity Institute. If so, they're good.

klyrs• 2 years ago

I saw some Mr Beast branded candy bars at the supermarket this week. Pretty sure that's not a future-saving venture, that's just taking advantage of the sugar-addicted kids that form his fanbase.

Lockal• 2 years ago

Good riddance.

A group of scammers without specialized education, theorizing about immortality (from people without medical education), saving humanity (thank you, but humanity thrives without your help), about ethics in artificial intelligence (from people who do not know any programming language), about drug promotion (from professional drug abusers), about pumping money into cryptocurrencies (which they personally purchased) and even crypto exchanges they own (hello SBF).

I hope to see all these people in jail (as I see they have already removed their names from the site).

arduanika13• 2 years ago

I hate to break it to you, but these scholars are not going to jail for their bad ideas. That's not how a free society works. We'll have to settle for general disrepute.

delton137• 2 years ago

I don't think FHI received any funding from SBF's Future Fund. (maybe a few of the visiting staff did, though)

andrelaszlo• 2 years ago

The future is here?

nineteen999• 2 years ago

attempting to shield them from ordinary academic pressures

oh the poor darlings

Future of Humanity Institute shuts down

Related Stories