Longtermist

Longtermists are in daily conversation with neartermists. It’s a red herring to argue that “abandoning what would most help people on Earth today isn’t exactly ethically sound.”

Some longtermists, for instance, argue that we need to balance the need to address climate change now with the need to invest in colonizing space; they encourage us to think on a billion-year timescale.

It’s an article of faith among longtermists that an event that led to the loss of 99% of humanity would be vastly preferable to one that kills off 100%.

Effective altruists talk about both “neartermism” and “longtermism.” Bankman-Fried said he wanted his money to address longtermist threats like the dangers posed by artificial intelligence spiraling out of control.

Earlier this year, the AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is associated with longtermist thinking, wrote an op-ed for Time magazine in which he argued that the world should not just institute a moratorium on artificial intelligence development but also be prepared to use nuclear arms to shut down large rogue computer farms that flouted the moratorium.