A republished essay on The Daily Wire is taking direct aim at Effective Altruism, the philosophy that has quietly shaped much of Silicon Valley’s thinking on artificial intelligence — and, increasingly, its politics. The piece, originally published at The Dossier under the title “What Is Effective Altruism — and Why Is It Awful?”, argues that the movement’s public-facing pitch as a do-good philosophy masks a far more radical set of commitments.
According to the essay, EA is often described by mainstream outlets as little more than a “philosophy focused on doing good in the world,” with adherents who believe mathematical calculation can settle questions of morality and virtue. The author contends that beneath that simple sales pitch sits an ideology that subordinates ordinary moral obligations — to family, faith, country, and truth — to the pursuit of “utility,” with EA’s founding philosophers and modern evangelists acting as self-appointed arbiters of what counts.
From Princeton to the Bay Area
The essay traces EA’s intellectual lineage to Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, whose 1972 essay “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” argued that people should give away substantial portions of their wealth to alleviate suffering in quantifiable ways. Singer, the author notes, has also rejected the idea that every human life holds inherent and equal dignity, and has controversially suggested that newborns do not have the same claim to life as self-aware persons.
The piece credits Oxford philosopher William MacAskill with building EA into an international movement and bringing millennials and Gen Z into its fold. It points to MacAskill’s promotion of the “earning to give” mantra — the idea that adherents should pursue lucrative careers and donate the proceeds to causes the movement deems worthy — and to his popularization of “longtermism,” a framework in which the hypothetical welfare of trillions of future beings can outweigh the needs and rights of people alive today.
To illustrate what the author calls the absurdity of EA-style arithmetic, the essay cites a 2015 article by MacAskill and Amanda Askell arguing that mass slaughtering of wild predators such as lions could reduce animal suffering. The essay also points to EA commentary defending shrimp welfare on the grounds that shrimp may feel pain, and to an account claiming insects matter more than people in the aggregate.
A Question of Honesty
Where the essay argues EA becomes most dangerous is on the question of truth. The author contrasts the Abrahamic teaching that humans are morally accountable before God for their actions, words, and beliefs with an EA ethic in which measurable impact matters far more. If morality is purely a matter of consequence, the essay reasons, then lying can be justified whenever an adherent believes deception produces greater utility.
Singer has defended utilitarianism on this front after the collapse of FTX, arguing that “wise, effective altruists and utilitarians know that honesty is the best policy,” according to the essay. But the author argues that Sam Bankman-Fried — the FTX founder convicted in 2024 on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy — did not make that calculation when he decided the stakes were too high.
The essay also highlights Liron Shapira, an AI doomsday commentator with a popular YouTube channel, who announced that he was registering as a Republican “in the interest of making AI x-risk bipartisan.” In his post, Shapira described himself as a “one-issue voter on not extincting ourselves.” For the essay’s author, the move illustrates how EA treats partisan affiliation as a strategic instrument — a “noble lie” useful for selling the apocalypse narrative to audiences less inclined to accept the AI superintelligence theory.
FTX and the Movement’s Dark Side
The piece argues that no figure exposed the darker side of EA more thoroughly than Bankman-Fried. MacAskill is credited with introducing SBF to the “earning to give” concept, and Bankman-Fried, inspired by EA principles, became the movement’s largest patron. According to the essay, SBF and allies launched the FTX Future Fund with money allegedly acquired in part through siphoned customer funds, and advertised plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on political causes prioritized by EAs. The fund’s leadership included MacAskill and other major EA figures, including Leopold Aschenbrenner, whose Situational Awareness hedge fund the essay says recently absorbed billions in losses.
Beyond the financial scandal, the author argues that EA’s influence extends through elite academic and nonprofit institutions and is concentrated heavily in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a smaller presence in other centers of power. The movement, the essay says, often recruits intelligent, largely apolitical young people in STEM undergraduate programs and offers them a quantifiable “speed run” philosophy that frames itself as humanity’s highest calling. The author also claims EA adherents tend to vote overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates, tying that tendency to the movement’s utilitarian framework rather than to any explicit partisan doctrine.
The essay’s closing argument is that EA’s emphasis on outcomes over process leaves gaps in its core principles that frequently surface as hypocrisy, particularly within the self-described “rationalist” communities its members inhabit. In that world, the author writes, adherents can obsess over probabilities and then leap to the emotionally overpowering conclusion that AI will kill everyone — a conclusion the essay calls a shaky theory rather than a settled fact — before working backward to lock in a utility calculation that justifies their forecast.
The Daily Wire’s republication joins a broader wave of scrutiny directed at Effective Altruism as its adherents have moved from charity evaluation into debates over AI safety, political strategy, and the future of humanity itself.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-ai-doomsday-cartel-and-the-radical-utilitarianism-of-effective-altruism