TimnitGebru mocks AI safety teams by resurfacing longtermism's rich-country-lives-first quote
PolarBearby · x · 2026-11-07
AI ethics researcher TimnitGebru reposted a snarky jab at corporate AI safety departments, attaching a book excerpt showing longtermist figure Nick Beckstead's 2013 PhD dissertation arguing that, due to richer countries' higher innovation and productivity, "saving a life in a rich country is substantially more important than saving a life in a poor country." The dissertation was called "one of the best texts on existential risk" by Toby Ord and is cited across Effective Altruism sites — a long-standing EA ethics controversy Gebru uses to question the values behind such funding.
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