Facebook billionaire exploited government loophole to secretly place supporters of the controversial “effective altruism” movement in key national security roles in the Biden administration There is.
Dustin Moskowitz, Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard dormmate, has been appointed to the White House’s National Security Council, the Pentagon and the Commerce Department in a deal that puts supporters of the movement at the heart of government. Pays salaries for a group of aides.
“Effective altruism” (known as EA) is a philosophy of encouraging people to make as much money as possible and donate it to what is seen as a noble cause, and is a philosophy of Silicon Valley billionaires. gained supporters.
The movement’s leaders include Moskowitz and his wife Kari Tuna, Skype’s Estonian co-founder Jan Tallinn, and Elon Musk has said he is neither a follower nor a funder. said that it was very much in line with his own philosophy.
But by the fall, the company was in crisis. Its most high-profile advocate, former crypto tycoon Sam Bankman Fried, was jailed.
Now, the movement is quietly trying to reshape its relationship with power, including at the heart of the White House, but its role is limited by concerns about AI, which effective altruism leaders have voiced opposition to. reflects the growing trend of
The main financier behind the White House cult is Mr. Moskowitz, 39, whose Facebook fortune is worth $18 billion and who runs Open Philanthropy, a network of affiliated think tanks and projects. Distributing cash.
One such nonprofit, Georgetown University’s Center for Emerging Technologies, known as CSET (to which Open Philanthropy contributed $55 million), offers salaries for “fellows” who hold government roles with high-level security access. I’m paying.
Fellows include Andrew Roan, director of emerging technologies at the National Security Council.
The other researchers they pay (the salaries they receive are not disclosed) also appear to have a role closer to government efforts on AI.
CSET Fellow Diana Gelhaus currently serves as a senior advisor for human resources in the Department of Defense’s Digital and Artificial Intelligence Directorate, giving her an important say in who the Department hires for AI projects.
Emily Weinstein is a senior advisor in the Office of the Under Secretary for Industry and Security at the Department of Commerce.
Will Hunt, a former CSET employee, served as special counsel in the Department of Commerce’s CHIPS Law Office. The CHIPS Act aims to bring semiconductor manufacturing, particularly in AI computing, back to the United States.
These can be paid for by outside nonprofit organizations through a little-known law. Intergovernmental Personnel Law This facilitates the short-term employment of external experts, bypassing normal procedures.
“I consider these fellowships to be important training opportunities for researchers, which is why CSET funds one-year fellowships for our staff in accordance with established procedures such as the Intergovernmental Personnel Act. ” said Dewey Murdick, CSET Executive Director. Please email the post.
A spokesperson for Open Philanthropy said the organization has been removed from CSET’s work and noted that Biden administration staffers are not necessarily EA ideologues.
“Open Philanthropy is proud to support Georgetown’s research; AI can also be used in national security settingsIt would not be appropriate to take credit for the programmatic decisions of independent grant recipients,” Open Philanthropy spokesperson Mike Levine told the Post.
“CSET is fully responsible for recruitment, research, reaccreditation, and collaboration with academic and government officials, including fellowships. We have no involvement in these secondments.”
The National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment.
But critics argue that EA supporters are being given inside information on AI regulation, while companies associated with the EA movement seek to profit from the space.
A current trend in AI governance is to pre-test or “audit” a company’s AI models.
In November, President Joe Biden signed an executive order on AI. The executive order was written with support from the RAND Corporation, a venerable think tank in California that recently received an infusion of funding from EA Group.
This prompted the National Institute of Standards and Technology to “develop guidance and benchmarks for evaluating and auditing the capabilities of AI.”
Anthropic, one of the companies involved in developing audit systems, has long been associated with the EA movement, including receiving investment funding from Bankman-Fried.
Effective Altruism began in 2011, inspired by a 1972 essay by Scottish-born philosopher William MacAskill. “Hunger, Abundance, and Morality” It was founded by Australian bioethicist Peter Singer. effective altruism center in Oxford, England.
It quickly gained a following in Silicon Valley, and Bankman-Fried said he was motivated to make billions of dollars by founding FTX. use his wealth for charity — He was eventually convicted of fraud and sentenced to life in prison.
Proponents of artificial intelligence development say EA is increasingly pushing a doomsday philosophy around the idea of unchecked artificial intelligence, a term coined by technology investor Marcus Andreessen that calls it “effective acceleration.” It has been suggested that this has led to a division between
Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University and a former accomplished altruist, said, “EA people stand out because they talk about very different topics in very different styles.” Ta. told Politico.
“They’re having fairly abstract discussions about fairly abstract concerns, and they’re raising the stakes to the max.”
