Kevin Xia 🔸
Bio
Participation5
Managing Director at Hive. Effective Altruism and Animal Advocacy Community Builder, experience in national, local and cause-area specific community building. Amateur Philosopher, particularly keen on moral philosophy.
How others can help me
I'm super happy to chat with anyone and learn from you, so don't hesitate to reach out if you don't have any expertise on the following - however, some specific areas I am hoping to learn more about are:
- I work at Hive, a global community-building organization for farmed animal advocates. I would love to hear your thoughts, (project) ideas and feedback!
- The implications, opportunities and risks of AI development on farmed animal advocacy.
- Farmed animal advocacy careers outside of NGOs and Alt-protein (e.g., food industry/adjacent sector jobs and policy in governmental institutions)
How I can help others
I have a fairly good overview of the farmed animal advocacy space, so happy to chat about all things there. I find that I am most helpful in brainstorming, red-teaming, effective giving and career advice. And, of course, happy to talk about Hive or meta-level work in animal advocacy more generally! I have some experience in community building on a city, national and cause-area specific level, so happy to nerd about that. I also have a background in philosophy, focusing on moral philosophy - so happy to bounce ideas or chat cause prioritization.
Posts 15
Comments21
Interestingly, Claude‘s numbers would actually suggest that BOAS is a higher EV decision (for some reason, it appears to double-count the risk; I.e., it took the EV which takes 60% failure into account and multiplied it again by 0.4).
Not that anyone here should (or would) make these decisions based on unchecked Claude BOTECs anyway; just found it to be an interesting flaw.
I would like to add to this and applaud Vasco for being such a good sport about this, sharing the draft with me in advance and engaging in an unusually civil and productive back and forth with me to clear up misunderstandings, including nitpicky nuances and issues that arose from my own miscommunication. To anyone who would like to share feedback or ways to improve our community guidelines, but prefers no to do so publicly, you can also reach me/us per dm here on the Forum/E-mail/Slack, and we have an anonymous form! Although we do generally think that a public discussion here could be valuable for other community spaces as well. I would also like to - despite this - thank you, Vasco, for being a valued community member and for your exceptional moral seriousness/commitment to taking ideas seriously and care.
Strong agree! I also often get asked „why push careers, if the movement is primarily funding constrained“ - it’s almost as though there is a bit of a misconception around the idea that only non profit work is a „career that helps animals“ and I think part of this is that there is no good guide on making an impact in adjacent areas (outside of E2G perhaps). I‘m very excited to see the research you are producing!
Great post, thanks for looking into this! I previously noted four different types of interventions one might want to prioritize given AIxAnimals; I'd love to hear your thoughts on the implications on this intersection from a broader, zoomed out perspective!
I am sure someone has mentioned this before, but…
For the longest time, and to a certain extent still, I have found myself deeply blocked from publicly sharing anything that wasn’t significantly original. Whenever I have found an idea existing anywhere, even if it was a footnote on an underrated 5-karma-post, I would be hesitant to write about it, since I thought that I wouldn’t add value to the “marketplace of ideas.” In this abstract concept, the “idea is already out there” - so the job is done, the impact is set in place. I have talked to several people who feel similarly; people with brilliant thoughts and ideas, who proclaim to have “nothing original to write about” and therefore refrain from writing.
I have come to realize that some of the most worldview-shaping and actionable content I have read and seen was not the presentation of a uniquely original idea, but often a better-presented, better-connected, or even just better-timed presentation of existing ideas. I now think of idea-sharing as a much more concrete, but messy contributor to impact, one that requires the right people to read the right content in the right way at the right time; maybe even often enough, sometimes even from the right person on the right platform, etc.
All of that to say, the impact of your idea-sharing goes much beyond the originality of your idea. If you have talked to several cool people in your network about something and they found it interesting and valuable to hear, consider publishing it!
Relatedly, there are many more reasons to write other than sharing original ideas and saving the world :)
Super interesting read, thanks for writing this! I have been thinking a bit about the US and China in an AI race and was wondering whether I could get your thoughts on two things I have been unsure about:
1) Can we expect the US to remain a liberal democracy once it develops AGI? (I think I first saw this point brought up in a comment here), especially given recent concerns around democratic backsliding? (And if we can't, would AGI under the US still be better?)
2) On animal welfare specifically, I'm wondering whether the very pragmatic, techno-optimistic, efficiency stance of China could make a pivot to alternative proteins (assuming they are an ultimately more efficient product) more likely than in the US, where alt-proteins might be more of a politically charged topic?
I don't have strong opinions on either, but these two points first nudged me to be significantly less confident in my prior preference for the US in this discussion.