effective altruism

OpenAI rode a hype-fueled rocket to business leadership over the last year. CEO Sam Altman managed to put a consumer-friendly wrapper on a years-old technology and capture the world’s attention. And now, for better or worse, OpenAI is better positioned than anyone to build the tools that will save or destroy the world. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the prize, what Altman recently called “magic intelligence in the sky.” If we ever get there, it may be OpenAI’s six-member board that decides if we’ve reached the…

Photo: Alex Wong (Getty Images)It turns out “effective altruism” isn’t so effective when a billionaire donor’s money dries up.Watch an Exclusive Clip From the Finale of Interview With the Vampire03:26Segment of Challenger Space Shuttle Found at Bottom of Atlantic OceanYesterday 1:50PMThat realization rang especially true this week for members of the FTX Foundation’s Future Fund, whose entire team resigned on Thursday saying they“are now unable to perform our work or process grants.” The resignation comes amid a continued…

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. WeChat users are begging Tencent to give their censored accounts back On Weibo, the popular Chinese social media platform, hundreds of desperate users were writing “confession letters” this past week.They are urgent pleas from people who have been banned from the Tencent-owned super app WeChat—begging representatives to restore their accounts on a service that has…

Within effective altruism’s framework, selecting one’s career is just as important as choosing where to make donations. EA defines a professional “fit” by whether a candidate has comparative advantages like exceptional intelligence or an entrepreneurial drive, and if an effective altruist qualifies for a high-paying path, the ethos encourages “earning to give,” or dedicating one’s life to building wealth in order to give it away to EA causes. Bankman-Fried has said that he’s earning to give, even founding the crypto…