Ajeya Cotra

It sounds like taking four months off was also a good call.

I guess it stopped.

You were reasonably unhappy.

I guess it could have gotten worse, though, if you hadn't done that.

And it gave you breathing room to make good decisions.

Yeah.

Coming back to effective altruism for a bit, I guess you said we basically almost don't talk about effective altruism on the show anymore.

I guess it was like a much bigger feature in the earlier years.

I mean, the biggest reason for that, I suppose, is now that we're more AI-focused,

But AI is an issue that so many people are concerned about, regardless of their broader moral values or broader moral commitments.

It just doesn't feel as relevant.

You don't have to be concerned about shrimp, or you don't have to be concerned about beings very far away in time to think it would be really good to do AI technical safety research, or it would be good to think about what governance challenges are going to be created by it.

And of course, EA has... It's a controversial idea, and I think actually is at its core quite a controversial idea.

Many people...

even fully understanding it, I think would simply not agree with its prescriptions, basically, of how resources ought to be allocated.

And why bring along all of that baggage when it's not actually decision relevant for most people?

Do you think we should talk about it more, or is that kind of just a sensible evolution?

Yeah, I think I guess digital sentience or like worrying about AIs themselves suffering is a good example, I guess.

Yeah, I would definitely make the prediction that affective altruism will loom large in the group of people working on that.

I guess, I mean, for someone who's not altruistic, it's a bit – or isn't motivated by social impact.