Well, the bottom line is extinction, for all of us. If the COIs block enough people from taking sufficient action, before it's too late, then that's what happens. The billions of EA money left in the bank as foom-doom hits will be useless. Might as well never have been accumulated in the first place.

I'll also note that there are plenty of other potential good investments out there. Crypto has gone up about as much as AI stocks in general over the last year, and some of them (e.g. SOL) have gone up much more than NVDA. There are promising start-ups in many non-AI areas. (Join this group to see more^[1]).

To answer your bottom two questions:

1. I think avoiding stock-market-wide index funds is probably going too far (as they are neutral about AI - if AI starts doing badly, e.g. because of regulation, then the composition of the index fund will change to reflect this).

2. I wouldn't recommend this as a strategy, unless they are already on their way down and heavy regulation looks imminent.

1. ^{^}

   But note that people are still pitching the likes of Anthropic in there! I don't approve of that.

Yes, but the COIs extend to altruistic impact too. Like - which EA EtG-er wouldn't want to be able to give away a billion dollars? Having AI stocks in your DAF still biases you toward supporting the big AI companies, and against trying to stop AGI/ASI development altogether (when that may well actually be the most high impact thing to do, even if it means you never get to give away a billion dollars).

The concern is mainly COIs, then bad PR. The direct demand shift could still be important though, if it catalyses further demand shift (e.g. divestment from apartheid South Africa eventually snowballed into having a large economic effect).

"I donate to AI safety and governance" [but not enough to actually damage the bottom lines of the big AI companies I've invested in.]

"Oh, no of course I intend to sell all my AI stock at some point, and donate it all to AI Safety." [Just not yet; it's "up only" at the moment!]

"Yes, my timelines stretch into the 2030s." [Because that's when I anticipate that I'll be rich from my AI investments.]

"I would be in favour of a Pause, if I thought it was possible." [And I could sell my massive amounts of non-publicly-traded Anthropic stock at another 10x gain from here, first.]

(It's bad because it creates a conflict of interest!)

the wealth of many donors to AI safety is pretty correlated with AI stocks

Unpopular opinion (at least in EA): it not only looks bad, but it is bad that this is the case. Divest!

AI safety donors investing in AI capabilities companies is like climate change donors investing in oil companies or animal welfare donors investing in factory farming (sounds a bit ridiculous when put like that, right? Regardless of mission hedging arguments).

Thanks for the feedback. Would events where people share rooms (e.g. having some dorm rooms) be something you would consider? Also, it would be possible to have some flexibility with number of rooms given CEEALAR's 30 rooms next door, and 100+ more rooms from other hotels/guest houses within 50m.

We do. It's used for both. It could just be used for events/retreats, but I'm unsure whether that would push CEEALAR in a too "for profit" direction if it's run by CEEALAR as such (currently the second building is still owned by me, with exclusive usage rights given to CEEALAR for free; but my intention has been to gift it to CEEALAR, and that may happen soon.)

• People might be neglecting measures that would help in very short timelines (e.g. transformative AI in under 3 years), though that might be because most people are unable to do much in these scenarios.

There's a lot that can be done, especially in terms of public and political advocacy. PauseAI is really gaining momentum now as a hub for the slow/Pause/Stop AGI/ASI movement (which is largely independent of EA). Lots of projects happening in the Discord, and see here for a roadmap of what they could do with more funding.

^I'm going to be lazy and tag a few people: @Joey @KarolinaSarek @Ryan Kidd @Leilani Bellamy @Habryka @IrenaK Not expecting a response, but if you are interested, feel free to comment or DM.