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It's very standard advice to notice when a sense of urgency is being created by a counterparty in some transaction; and to reduce your trust in that counterparty as well as pausing.
It feels like a valuable observation, to me, that the counterparty could be internal--some unendorsed part of your own values, perhaps.
Alignment is treated as the hard problem and cooperation as the nice-to-have. This priority is backwards.
Alignment is a technical problem that becomes dramatically easier or harder depending on the political environment it's solved in. Racing makes alignment harder: less time, more corner-cutting, fragmented talent, competitive pressure to deploy before you're confident. Cooperation makes alignment easier: more time, shared resources, no one to race against, freedom to be as careful as the problem requires. The standard objection is that cooperation is politically intractable, but a hard political problem that determines whether alignment can succeed outranks a technical problem pursued under conditions that practically ensure failure.
There's also a structural reason cooperation is potentially more achievable here than in previous arms races. With nuclear weapons, "my country has nukes" is straightforwardly good for me, as I trust my government more than the adversary. With ASI, "my country controls ASI" raises an immediate question: *who exactly?* The President? A lab CEO? A future leader I find dangerous? At every level of every hierarchy, almost nobody is the person who would actually wield the power — and for everyone else, the rational preference is that no single actor has unilateral control. Cooperation here isn't altruism, it's self-interest. And solving alignment without cooperation is actively destabilizing; it removes the shared existential risk that was the primary brake on racing, making competition more attractive and conflict more likely.
But there's a deeper issue. Suppose alignment is solved perfectly and you can build an ASI that does exactly what its operator wants. You've now created the most dangerous weapon in history and handed it to whoever finishes first. "Aligned to whom?" becomes the entire question, and it's not a technical question at all. A perfectly aligned ASI controlled by a single actor is an existential risk to everyone else. Alignment without cooperation solves the control problem and creates the domination problem. Cooperation without alignment still prevents unilateral control and preserves the conditions under which alignment can be attempted carefully. Whether alignment's success is good news for humanity depends entirely on whether cooperation came first.
Cooperation is the hard problem, alignment is downstream.
Epistemic status: exploratory pilot project done, seeking additional funding
Despite talks of incoming avalanches of AI IPO funds, earning-to-give seems far from oversaturated and EA funding seems massively concentrated in a few donors and institutions. Additional sources and diversity of donors is almost unquestionably good, and almost any outreach that can be done cost-effectively, should probably be done especially when accounting for second-order effects.
University clubs, talks at hedge funds, Founder's Pledge etc. manage to capture many of the most promising areas, but I recently discovered a high-earning demographic that based on my extensive search has never been targeted with outreach before. Adult entertainment professionals. This profession can in some areas outperform software engineers in earning potential, though career length and long-term earnings are more limited (with short timelines, I find this less significant). I decided to focus on a subset of this demographic I had immediate local access to: high-end exotic dancers, also known as strippers.
I happen to live in a high cost of living area with several dance clubs nearby. For the sake of speed I decided to fund a pilot project myself (though I remain open to retroactive funding via e.g. impact certificates) to test outreach towards this demographic. What follows is a preliminary report (full post pending) of my experience and outcomes of the project.
Although I am a heterosexual male, I was not previously familiar with any strippers in a personal capacity. Not wanting to soil the fresh outreach-ground with inexperience, I decided to first visit and familiarize myself with the environment a couple times without an agenda. As a heterosexual male and beauty-enjoyer, this was a generally pleasant (though expensive) experience, and I became familiar with several professionals with whom I discussed various topics of interest during different styles of interactions.
I couldn't discover a "university group" equivalent method for outreach, the profession at least in my locale didn't have a shared forum (online or elsewhere), so I quickly determined the primary outreach channel was the workplace directly, which would otherwise seem rude but here discussion was encouraged. I would simply be a paying customer and pitch earning to give to the best of my abilities. In practice the venue has already solved the cold-outreach consent problem through a direct price mechanism.
Now for the outreach proper. By this time I was already considered familiar by some of the staff and had mildly warm connections to them. I decided to focus on what I already knew and give a standard Giving What We Can -style pitch (see various 1-on-1 resources for details). Modified somewhat for the situation, paying attention to how receptive they were and backing off if I felt pushy (generally the staff were interested in anything you, as a paying customer, were).
Results overall were hopeful. Out of a dozen people I properly pitched, two decided to take the GWWC trial pledge, and one the full 10% pledge. These already recouped my costs easily, and a quick BOTEC suggests this project is competitive or superior to GWWC's own reported figures (possibly due to its neglected nature). My approach received almost practically no negative attention, and the dancers seemed genuinely interested in hearing about these topics. (I'm deliberately not disclosing exact cost/gain figures until the funding conversation is further along.)
Overall I consider the pilot project a success and hope to continue this style of outreach assuming I procure additional funding for it. I am not sure if there is potential for a new org here, but there's definitely room for a one person project. If others are interested in replicating my results, I am willing to fly/travel to other locations to provide guidance. This demographic remains maximally neglected for now.
Despite talks of incoming avalanches of AI IPO funds, earning-to-give seems far from oversaturated and EA funding seems massively concentrated in a few donors and institutions.
When rich people say "I just need to get a little more rich and then I will definitely start doing good", don't hold your breath.
For the part when you are looking for funding to spend more time interacting with strippers who are totally sincere when talking to their customers... nice try.