The deaths of effective altruism

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View in browser  |  Your newsletter preferences  03.31.24 The Deaths of Effective Altruism Effective altruism is the philosophy of Sam Bankman-Fried, the crypto wunderkind now sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud and money laundering. Elon Musk has said that EA is close to what he believes. Facebook mogul Dustin Moskovitz and Skype cofounder Jaan Tallinn have spent mega-millions on its causes, and EAs have made major moves to influence American politics. In 2021, EA boasted of $46 billion in funding—comparable to what it's estimated the Saudis spent over decades to spread Islamic fundamentalism around the world. Effective altruism pitches itself as a hyperrational method of using any resource for the maximum good of the world. Here in Silicon Valley, EA has become a secular religion of the elites. Effective altruists filled the board of OpenAI, the $80 billion tech company that invented ChatGPT (until the day in November when they nearly crashed the company). EA is also heavily recruiting young people across rich universities like Stanford, where I work. Money is flowing from EA headquarters to entice students at Yale, Columbia, Berkeley, Penn, Swarthmore—if you went to a wealthy school, you'll find EAs all over your alma mater. Before the fall of SBF, the philosophers who founded EA glowed in his glory. Then SBF's crypto empire crumbled, and his EA employees turned witness against him. The philosopher-founders of EA scrambled to frame Bankman-Fried as a sinner who strayed from their faith. Yet Sam Bankman-Fried is the perfect prophet of EA, the epitome of its moral bankruptcy. The EA saga is not just a modern fable of corruption by money and fame, told in exaflops of computing power. This is a stranger story of how some small-time philosophers captured some big-bet billionaires, who in turn captured the philosophers—and how the two groups spun themselves into an opulent vortex that has sucked up thousands of bright minds worldwide. The real difference between the philosophers and SBF is that SBF is now facing accountability, which is what EA's founders have always struggled to escape.—Leif Wenar READ THE FULL STORY You Might Also Like '$5,000 to Save a Life Is a Bargain' BY VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN | 8-MINUTE READ As Sam Bankman-Fried's downfall sends effective altruism into a spiral of self-doubt, the idealist quant Elie Hassenfeld is still helping Silicon Valley richies give away hundreds of millions each year. Jeffrey Epstein's Island Visitors Exposed by Data Broker BY DHRUV MEHROTRA AND DELL CAMERON | 7-MINUTE READ A WIRED investigation uncovered coordinates collected by a controversial data broker that reveal sensitive information about visitors to an island once owned by Epstein, the notorious sex offender. ADVERTISEMENT The Mayor of London Enters the Bullshit Cinematic Universe BY PETER GUEST | 15-MINUTE READ It all started with an asthma attack. Now Sadiq Khan finds himself at the center of a global conspiracy. Large Language Models' Emergent Abilities Are a Mirage BY STEPHEN ORNES | 4-MINUTE READ A new study suggests that sudden jumps in LLMs' abilities are neither surprising nor unpredictable, but are actually the consequence of how we measure ability in AI. GET WIRED The future is happening fast. Stay ahead of it with WIRED. Get full tech coverage with a subscription to WIRED for just $30 $5. Plus free stickers! Subscribe Now. ADVERTISEMENT Have questions or comments? Reply to this email.   This email was sent to you by WIRED. To ensure delivery to your inbox (not bulk or junk folders), please add our email address, wired@newsletters.wired.com, to your address book.   View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe or manage your newsletter subscriptions