Ajeya Cotra

I guess for years it had been funding all kinds of AI-related stuff, but as AI became a much bigger industry, it became apparent

what sorts of concerns different people had.

It's work in some ways started to just clash with like very large commercial interests potentially.

And also just alternative ideologies that had different ideas about how things ought to be regulated or how things ought to go.

And so you were now in a world where there were people who would sit down and think, how can I fuck with OpenPhil?

Like, what can I do to give these guys a terrible day?

What have they published that we could spread that will be embarrassing for them?

And in that kind of environment where people just literally want to cause trouble for you, it's a lot less attractive to be maximally forthcoming about all of your internal deliberations and why you made all of your decisions.

All of us would potentially be a bit more conservative in that kind of environment.

So over the years, a lot of people, I guess usually critics, have said that effective altruism has some things in common with religious movements.

To what extent have you found that to be the case, and to what extent have you found that not to be the case?

Yeah, I would think a key way that it's not like a religion is that it feels more like, in many respects, a business to me.

Or it's like a startup or an organization that has quite a functional goal.

I guess that's a different aspect of it.

I guess some people like the ideas.

They like the blog posts.

They don't engage with the community whatsoever.

And I suppose for them, it's going to be a different experience.

And there's people who like the community.

Actually, there's many people who participate in the kind of community of people who would say, I'm involved in effective activism.