#97 - Did Effective Altruism Have Ulterior Motives From the Beginning?
From Increments by Ben Chugg and Vaden Masrani
January 23, 2026 · 1h 42m
About this episode
The episode discusses the potential ulterior motives behind effective altruism and its connection to AI safety.
Two years without discussing effective altruism -- did you miss it? Not as much as Vaden, surely. And probably a right bit more than Ben. Well, we're back in the game with a spicy one. Was EA a front for AI safety from the beginning? Did the leaders care not a wit for global poverty? Is Ben going to throw himself out window if Vaden keeps this up? We discuss Feedback on our introspection episode The motives of the EA founders The felicia forum Is this a conspiracy theory? EA's strategic ambiguity Bostromism, transhumanism, and AI safety EA funding The public/core divide and the funnel model Quotes new effective altruists tend to start off concerned about global poverty or animal suffering and then hear, take seriously, and often are convinced by the arguments for existential risk mitigation - Will MacAskill Existential risk isn’t the most useful public face for effective altruism – everyone inc[l]uding Eliezer Yudkowsky agrees about that - Scott Alexander, 2015 Utilitymonster: GWWC is explicitly poverty-focused but high impact careers (HIC) is not. In fact, hardcore members of GWWC are heavily interested in x-risk, and I estimate that 10-15% of its general membership is as well…
People in this episode
Hosts: Ben Chugg, Vaden Masrani
Topics covered
- effective altruism
- AI safety
- global poverty
- existential risk
- philosophy
- conspiracy theory
Keywords
- effective altruism
- AI safety
- global poverty
- existential risk
- Bostromism
- transhumanism
- philosophy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: GWWC, EA, Bostromism, transhumanism, AI safety
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