An effective altruism-linked organization, as of last month, is paying $2,000 in weekly compensation for an ostensibly grassroots anti-AI media campaign.
Irreplaceable, which employs a campaign strategist who also works for the effective altruism-funded Center for AI Safety, supports protests against AI as a way to advocate for regulations that could benefit the effective altruism agenda.
“What’s missing is coordinated action that forces the government to respond,” it claimed.
It’s currently recruiting student protest leaders for an anti-AI uprising in October. They’ll help to coordinate walkouts at more than 100 colleges to demand new regulations to affect the AI industry.
FTX-funded charity Effective Ventures to shut down in the UK
Effective altruists want you to vote for AI regulators
Irreplaceable’s campaign says that AI should be paused and placed under public control, allowing effective altruists to recommend further policy changes.
According to a job description, each paid organizer will coordinate about a dozen flagship campuses and will carry out high-volume outreach, forge political partnerships, and run a digital creator program.
A skeptic called it an astroturfing campaign.
Effective altruism has strong historical ties to the crypto industry, especially via its most infamous criminal, Sam Bankman-Fried, a once-devout effective altruist, as well as other criminals who worked with him at FTX like Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang.
Irreplaceable launched on August 28 with veterans of climate change groups like Sunrise Movement and 350.org.
Its privacy page names an Education Fund and Action Fund but discloses no donors, leaving the public guessing about who is funding it, even though The Atlantic has already identified Jeremy Ornstein as an Irreplaceable strategist who concurrently serves at the Center for AI Safety.
The group’s public pages don’t identify Irreplaceable’s literal financiers.
On August 27, the founder of an AI Safety fellowship announced to the effective altruism community that it was proudly introducing 14 new “AI Safety Communicators,” naming Ornstein as an Irreplaceable strategist and describing Irreplaceable as originating from the Center for AI Safety itself.
