Ai ethicists often imply that certain people in AI are just using x-risk as a form of tech hype/PR. The idea is that signaling concern for AI x-risk might make it look like you are concerned and responsible, while simultaneously advertising how powerful your product is and implying it will be much more powerful soon so that people invest in your company. Bonus points are that you can signal trustworthiness and caring while ignoring current-day harms caused by your product, and you can still find justifications for going full steam ahead on development (such as saying we have to put the moral people at the head of the race). 

I think this theory would explain the observed behavior here pretty well. 

Generally considered by who? If you polled the general population, I think the position that rich lives are more important to save than poor lives would be highly unpopular. I certainly don't believe it. 

One factor is that rich people have more resources and ability to save themselves. If a millionaire and an impoverished person both need a ten thousand dollar treatment to live, obviously you should donate to the impoverished person!

For people who are confused by the title, there is a nice paper overview on computerphile here, titled "has generative AI already peaked?". 

If I'm interpreting it right, the authors seem to be indicating based on their experiments that shoving in more compute power and data like openAI is doing with GPT will experience diminishing returns and not lead to significant general reasoning outside of their training set conditions. Or in EA terms, AGI is unlikely to arrive without significant algorithmic breakthroughs. 

EA, being a fallible movement, is wrong about a lot of things. A lot of people that are not aligned with EA have completely valid reasons for not doing so. If you excessively filter for people that already agree with you on everything, you risk creating a groupthink atmosphere where alternative ideas have no real way to enter the discourse. Take this to the extreme and you pretty much end up with a cult. 

Also, EA is not representative of the general public, and thus will have a hard time knowing how ideas and policies are received by or impact broader demographics. Having normal people around to provide sanity checks is a useful byproduct of hiring more generally, rather than finding people already adjacent to this very small and odd subculture. 

What is the best practice for dealing with biased sources? For example, if I'm writing an article critical of EA and cite a claim made by emille torres, would it be misleading to not mention that they have an axe to grind?

In most of the cases you cited, I think being more honest is a good goal.

However, echoing Ulrik's concern here, the potential downsides of "deep honesty" are not just limited to the "deeply honest" person. For example, a boss being "deeply honest" about being sexually attracted to a subordinate is not generally virtuous, it could just make them uncomfortable, and could easily be sexual harassment. This isn't a hypothetical, a high up EA cited the similar concept of "radical openness" as a contributing factor to his sexual harassment. 

White lies exist for a reason, there are plenty of cases where people are not looking for "radical honesty" . Like, say you turn someone down from a date because they have a large disfiguring facial scar that makes them unattractive to you. Some people might want to know that this is the reason, other people might find it depressing to be told that a thing they have no control over makes them ugly. I think this is a clear case where the recipient should be the one asking. Don't be "deeply honest" to someone about potentially sensitive subjects unprompted.  

As another example, you mention being honest when people ask "how are you". Generally, it's a good idea to open up to your friends, and have them open up to you. But if your cashier asks "how are you", they are just being polite, don't trauma dump to them about your struggles. 

Thank you for writing this post, I know how stressful writing something like this can be and I hope you give yourself a break!

I especially agree with your points about the lack of empathy. Empathy is the ability to understand and care about how other people are hurt or upset by your actions, no matter their background. This is an important part of moral reasoning, and is completely compatible with logical reasoning. One should not casually ignore harms in favour of utilitarian pursuits, that's how we got SBF (and like, stalinism). And if you do understand the harms, and realize that you have to do the action anyway, you should at least display to the harmed parties that you understand why they are upset. 

The OP was willing to write up their experience and explain why they left, but I wonder how many more people are leaving, fed up, in silence, not wanting to risk any backlash? How many only went to a few meetings but never went further because they sensed a toxic atmosphere? The costs of this kind of atmosphere are often hidden from view. 

In my experience, this forum seems kinda hostile to attempts at humour (outside of april fools day). This might be a contributing factor to the relatively low population here!