Almost exactly a month ago—about a fraction of a second before the issue exploded into the public consciousness—I attempted to address the moral peculiarities of “Effective Altruism,” the philosophy-based behavioral code that animates and governs the lives of the tech elites who dominate AI. In retrospect, that column was not my finest. It was a bit of a mess, criticizing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and his family for their connections to Effective Altruism, Effective Altruism for its foundation in the consequentialist/utilitarian tradition, and Pope Leo XIV for appearing to lend Anthropic the backing of the Catholic Church by inviting Chris Olah, the company’s head of interpretability research, to the public unveiling of Magnifica Humanitas, the Pontiff’s encyclical on AI. In short, in an attempt to discredit the entirety of the Effective Altruism movement, I failed to pick a single target and, as a result, failed to make a particularly effective case against any of it.
Given that, I want to take a second bite of that apple today, focusing specifically on consequentialism/utilitarianism, which, by traditional Western standards, is a moral abomination. Utilitarianism provides the ethical foundations of Effective Altruism, which should profoundly concern the rest of us, particularly at this moment, when the Effective Altruists are trying to enlist the support of the federal government to slow the development of AI and to put them and their allies in charge of what does or does not constitute “responsible” progress moving forward. Even without tying utilitarianism to Peter Singer, the best-known contemporary utilitarian ethicist and a lightning rod for monstrous ideas, the moral code it produces can be demonstrated to be grotesque.
Read Full Article: https://amgreatness.com/2026/09/21/those-who-walk-away-from-effective-altruism/
