Effective altruism is the phrase of the last few weeks. The last issue of The Economist called it “this century’s biggest idea.” I concur, at least for the Western world. That’s especially true because many billions of dollars are now backing it up. Coefficient Giving is only the largest of many young philanthropic groups animated by effective altruism, and this year it’s set to spend more than $2 billion of its $40 billion fund on the movement’s favorite causes, from AI safety research to uncaging farm-raised chickens. That level of spending will likely exceed the Ford, Rockefeller, and Walton foundations combined.
Effective altruism was first given a name in 2011 as it spread among a handful of academics, but it’s exploding in influence now because it’s drawn so many adherents within the suddenly dominant realm of artificial intelligence. After fears about AI safety exploded into the public last month, much of the press raced to expose the effective altruists and fellow travelers who work at the major AI labs, portraying them as a Bay Area sex cult determined to control our lives. And even when one considers effective altruism fairly, its core ideas differ from those of Christianity and from the commonsense morality of most Americans, whether religious or secular. So when you explain effective altruism, a lot of people end up hating it.
To understand effective altruism, we need to draw a distinction between its intellectual and sociological manifestations. Intellectually, think of it as a branch of utilitarianism. It suggests we should judge social policies by how much net utility they create, or alternatively, how much net suffering they avoid. This resembles the pleasure-pain calculus of the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, including in its emphasis on the welfare of animals alongside humans. Vegetarianism and veganism are common in effective altruist circles.
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