• Establishing a Justice, Equity, Inclusion and Diversity (JEID) committee.

Why was this valuable?

Dwarkesh Patel recently asked Holden about this:

Dwarkesh Patel 

Are you talking about OpenAI? Yeah. Many people on Twitter might have asked if you were investing in OpenAI. 

Holden Karnofsky 

I mean, you can look up our $30 million grant to OpenAI. I think it was back in 2016–– we wrote about some of the thinking behind it. Part of that grant was getting a board seat for Open Philanthropy for a few years so that we could help with their governance at a crucial early time in their development. I think some people believe that OpenAI has been net negative for the world because of the fact that they have contributed a lot to AI advancing and to AI being sort of hyped, and they think that gives us less time to prepare for it. However, I do think that all else being equal, AI advancing faster gives us less time to prepare. It is a bad thing, but I don't think it's the only consideration. I think OpenAI has done a number of good things too, and has set some important precedents. I think it's probably much more interested in a lot of the issues I'm talking about and risks from advanced AI than like the company that I would guess would exist if they didn't, would be doing similar things.

I don't really accept that the idea that OpenAI is a negative force. I think it's highly debatable. We could talk about it all day. If you look at our specific grant, it's even a completely different thing because a lot of that was not just about boosting them, but about getting to be part of their early decision making. I think that was something that there were benefits and was important. My overall view is that I don't look back on that grant as one of the better grants we've made, not one of the worse ones. But certainly we've done a lot of things that have had, you know, that have not worked out. I think there are some times shortly when we've done things that have consequences we didn't intend. No philanthropist can be free of that. What we can try and do is be responsible, seriously do our homework to try to understand things beforehand, see the risks that we're able to see, and think about how to minimize them.

This is textbook Gell-Mann amnesia 

This is really sad and frustrating to see, that a community which prides itself in rigorous and independent thinking has taken to reciting by the same platitudes that every left wing organization does. We're supposed to hold ourselves to higher standards than this. 

Posts like this makes me much less being interested in being a part of EA.

Your patience is admirable :)

lol when people use this burner account, it's usually closer to "this argument could get a bit annoying" than "I feel the need to protect my anonymity for fear of retribution." please don't speak for all burners

I disagree with this. For one, OpenPhil has a higher bar now. There's a lot of work that needs to be done. ASB and others might already think this was a very bad grant. There's a cost to dwelling on these things, especially as EA Forums drama rather than a high quality post mortem.  

it's not anywhere in any canonical EA materials

This seems a bit obtuse. In any local EA community I've been a part of, poly plays a big part in the culture. 

Plenty of EAs are criticizing it in this very thread.

This is sort of true, but most of them are receiving a lot of downvotes. And this is the first time I've seen a proper discussion about it.