Effective altruism resurfaces with anti-AI campaign

An organisation linked to effective altruism is now offering $2,000 per week to run what appears to be a grassroots anti-AI media campaign.

Irreplaceable, whose campaign strategist also works for the effective altruism-backed Center for AI Safety, is using protests against AI to push for regulations that could align with the effective altruism agenda.

“What’s missing is coordinated action that forces the government to respond,” it claimed.

The group is currently seeking student protest leaders for an anti-AI uprising in October. They will help organise walkouts on over 100 campuses to call for new rules affecting the artificial intelligence sector.

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Effective altruists want you to vote for AI regulators

Irreplaceable’s campaign argues that AI must be halted and brought under public oversight so that effective altruists can propose further regulatory measures.

Based on a job listing, each paid organiser will oversee roughly a dozen key campuses, conduct high-volume outreach, build political alliances, and manage a digital creator programme.

A critic described it as an astroturfing campaign.

Effective altruism has deep historical links to the crypto sector, particularly through its most notorious criminal, Sam Bankman-Fried, a former devoted effective altruist, along with other FTX associates such as Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang.

Irreplaceable launched on August 28 with veterans from climate organisations like Sunrise Movement and 350.org.

Its privacy page lists an Education Fund and Action Fund but reveals no donors, leaving the public uncertain about its funding sources, even though The Atlantic has already identified Jeremy Ornstein as an Irreplaceable strategist who also works at the Center for AI Safety.

The group’s public materials do not name Irreplaceable’s actual backers.

On August 27, the founder of an AI Safety fellowship announced to the effective altruism community that it was introducing 14 new “AI Safety Communicators,” naming Ornstein as an Irreplaceable strategist and describing Irreplaceable as originating from the Center for AI Safety itself.