“Do short AI timelines make other cause areas useless?” by Hayley Clatterbuck, arvomm

The cause prioritization landscape in EA is changing. Prominent groups have shut down, others have been founded, and everyone's trying to figure out how to prepare for AI. This is the third in a series of posts critically examining the state of cause prioritization and strategies for moving forward.

Executive Summary

• An increasingly common argument is that we should prioritize work in AI over work in other cause areas (e.g. farmed animal welfare, reducing nuclear risks) because the impending AI revolution undermines the value of working in those other areas.
• We consider three versions of the argument:
  • Aligned superintelligent AI will solve many of the problems that we currently face in other cause areas.
  • Misaligned AI will be so disastrous that none of the existing problems will matter because we’ll all be dead or worse.
  • AI will be so disruptive that our current theories of change will [...]

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Outline:

(00:30) Executive Summary

(02:27) Introduction

(06:07) Three versions of the argument

(06:11) Argument 1: Aligned AI will solve it

(12:22) Which areas will be solvable by AI?

(13:04) Dimensions necessary for success

(14:51) Is AI effective on those dimensions?

(16:28) Timeline of impact

(18:01) Argument 2: Misaligned AI will destroy us

(21:12) Argument 3: AI will change the landscape, we should wait for the dust to settle

(24:49) The general structure of the argument

(25:44) Objections to Premise 1 and 2: The chances of a strong AI bottleneck are overestimated

(29:12) Objection to Premise 3: AI work doesn't win by default

(30:25) Objection to Premise 3: Work on other cause areas causally contributes to the AI revolution going well

(33:13) Conclusion

(34:30) Acknowledgements

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First published:

July 23rd, 2025

Source:

https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/fkHc5uxfauZ3EFkJ9/do-short-ai-timelines-make-other-cause-areas-useless

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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