| Submit your comments on this article |
| Cyber |
| Meet the ex-Biden appointee who could be major force against Trump's AI agenda: 'Doomsayer' |
| 2025-09-10 |
| [FoxNews] President Donald Trump’s push to establish "America’s global AI dominance" could run into friction from an unlikely source: the "effective altruism" movement, a small but influential group that has a darker outlook on artificial intelligence. Trump signed an executive order earlier this year titled, "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence." This week he met with top technology industry leaders, including Mark Zuckerburg, Bill Gates and others, for meetings at the White House in which AI loomed large in the discussions. However, not all the industry’s leaders share the president’s vision for American AI dominance. Jason Matheny, a former senior Biden official who currently serves as the CEO of the RAND Corporation, is a leader in the effective altruism movement, which, among other priorities, seeks to regulate the development of artificial intelligence with the goal of reducing its risks. Effective altruism is a philanthropic social movement where proponents claim to be aiming to maximize the good they can do in the world and give to what they calculate are the most effective charities and interventions. Part of this movement includes powerful donors from across many sectors, including technology, where funds are poured into fighting against what the group sees as existential threats, including artificial intelligence. Some in the movement have also pledged to give away a portion of their income, while others have argued about the morality of earning as much money as possible in order to give it away. A former Defense Department official familiar with the industry’s leaders told Fox News Digital that since a 2017 speech at an effective altruism forum in which he laid out his vision, Matheny has "been very deliberate about inserting personnel who share his AI-doomerism worldview" into government and government contractor roles. "Since then, he has made good on every single one of his calls to action to explicitly infiltrate think tanks, in-government decision makers, and trusted government contractors with this effective altruism, AI kind of doomsayer philosophy," the official continued. A RAND Corporation spokesperson pushed back against this label and said that Matheny "believes a wide range of views and backgrounds are essential to analyzing and informing sound public policy. His interest is in encouraging talented young people to embrace public service." The spokesperson added that AI being an "existential threat" is "not the lens" through which the company approaches AI, but said, "Our researchers are taking a broad look at the many ways AI is and will impact society – including both opportunities and threats." In his 2017 speech, Matheny discussed his vision of influencing the government from the inside and outside to advance effective altruistic goals. "The work that I've done at IARPA (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity) has convinced me that there's a lot of low-hanging fruit within government positions that we should be picking as effective altruists. There are many different roles that effective altruists can have within government organizations," Matheny told an effective altruism forum in 2017, before going on to explain how even "fairly junior positions" can "wield incredible influence." Related: Effective altruism 10/25/2024 Black Lives Matter Global circling the drain as it runs out of cash: report Effective altruism 11/29/2022 Analysis: What in the Actual F‐ Is Wrong With These People? Effective altruism 11/12/2022 Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto empire ‘was run by a gang of kids in the Bahamas' who all dated each other |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2025-09-10 10:29 |