Thanks for this, this is interesting. 

I am sure there are cleaner cases, like your "Bob works for BigAI" example, where taking legal action, and amplifying in media, could produce a Streisand effect that gives cultural awareness to the more ambiguous cases. Some comments:

Silicon Valley is one "big, borderless workplace"

Silicon Valley is unique in that it's one "big, borderless workplace" (quoting Nussbaum). As she puts it:

Even if you are not currently employed by Harvey Weinstein or seeking employment within his production company, in a very real sense you always are seeking employment and you don’t know when you will need the good favor of a person of such wealth, power, and ubiquitous influence. (Source.)

Therefore, policing along clean company lines becomes complicated really fast. Even if Bob isn't directly recruiting for BigAI (but works for BigAI), being in Bob's favor could improve your chances of working at to SmallAI, which Bob has invested in.

The "borderless workplace" nature of Silicon Valley, where company lines are somewhat illusory, and high-trust social networks are what really matter, is Silicon Valley's magic and function. But when it comes to policing bad behavior, it is Silicon Valley's downfall.

An example that's close to scenarios that I've seen

• Alice is an engineer at SmallAI who lives at a SF hacker house with her roommates Bob, Chad, and Dave, who all work for BigAI. The hacker house is, at first, awesome because Bob, Chad, and Dave frequently bring in their brilliant industry friends. Alice gets to talk about AI everyday and build a strong industry network. However, there are some problems.
  • Chad is very into Alice and comes into her room often. Alice has tried to set a firm boundary, but Chad not picking up on it, whether intentionally or not. Alice starts getting paranoid and is very careful to lock her room at night.
  • Alice does not want to alienate Chad, who has a lot of relationships in the industry. She feels like she's already been quite firm. She feels like she cannot tell Bob or Dave, who are like Chad's brothers. She's afraid that Bob or Dave may think she's making a big deal over nothing.
  • Alice's friend Bertha, who is an engineer at MidAI, has stopped coming to the hacker house because, as she tells Alice, she finds their parties to be creepy. At the last party, the hacker house hosted a wealthy venture capitalist from AI MegaInvestments who appeared to be making moves on a nineteen-year-old female intern at LittleAI. When Bertha tried to say something, Bob and Chad seemed to get really annoyed. Who does Bertha think she is, this random MidAI employee? The venture capitalist might invest in their spin-off from BigAI one day! Bertha stops coming to the hacker house, and her network slightly weakens. 
  • Alice also debates distancing herself from her house. She secretly agrees with Bertha, and she's finding Chad increasingly creepy. However, she's forged such an incredible network of AI researchers at their parties-- it all must be worth it, right? Maybe one day she'll also transition into BigAI, because she now knows a ton of people there.
  • One day, Alice's other ML engineer friend, Charlotte, visits their hacker house. She's talking a lot to Bob, and it looks like they're having a good time. Alice does not hear from Charlotte for awhile, and she doesn't think much of it.
  • Six months later, Charlotte contacts Alice to say that Bob brought her to his bedroom and assaulted her. Charlotte has left Silicon Valley because of traumatic associations. Alice is shocked and does not know what to do. She doesn't want to confront or alienate Bob. Bob had made some comments that Charlotte had been acting kind of "hysterical." And what if Charlotte is lying? She and Charlotte aren't that close anyway.
  • Nevertheless, Alice starts to feel increasingly uncomfortable at her hacker house and eventually also leaves.
• As you can see, Alice's hacker house is now a clusterf*ck. Alice, Bertha, and Charlotte have effectively been driven from the industry due to cultural problems, while Bob, Chad, and Dave's networks continue to strengthen. This scenario happens all the time.

Proposal

I propose that the high-status companies and VC firms in Silicon Valley (e.g. OpenAI, Anthropic, Sequoia, etc) could make more explicit that they are aware of Silicon Valley's "big, borderless workplace" nature. Sexual harassment at industry-related hacker houses, co-working spaces, and events, even when not on direct company grounds, reflects the company to some extent, and it is not acceptable.

While I don't believe these statements will deter the most severe offenders, pressure from institutions/companies could weaken the prevalent bystander culture, which currently allows these perpetrators to continue harassing/assaulting.

I do think "EA is plagued with sexism, racism, and abuse" is a very very granular first approximation for what's actually going on.

 A better, second approximation may look like this description of "the confluence": 

"The broad community I speak of here are insular, interconnected subgroups that are involved most of these categories: tech, EA (Effective Altruists), rationalists, Burning Man camps, secret parties, and coliving houses. I’ve heard it referred to as a “clusterf**k” and “confluence”, I usually call it a community. The community is centered in the San Francisco bay area but branch out into Berlin, London/Oxford, Seattle, and New York. The group is purpose-driven, with strong allegiance to non-mainstream morals and ideas about shaping the future of society and humanity" (Source)

There is probably an even better third approximation out there.

I do think that these toxic dynamics largely got tied to EA because EA is the most coherent subculture that overlaps with "the confluence." Plus, EA was in the news cycle, which made journalists incentivized to write articles about it, especially when "SBF" and "FTX" get picked up by search engines and recommender systems. EA is a convenient tag word for a different (but overlapping) community that is far more sinister.

As I wrote in my response above, I'm mainly sad that my experience of EA was through the this distorted lens. It also seems clear to me that there are large swathes (perhaps the majority?) of EA that are healthy and well-meaning, and I am happy this has been your experience! 

One of my motives for writing this post was giving people a better "second approximation" than EA itself being the problem. I do believe people put too much blame on EA, and one could perhaps make the argument that more responsibility could be put on surrounding AI companies, such as OpenAI/Anthropic, some of whose employees may be involved in these dynamics through the hacker house scene.