The headline on Martin Sandbu’s Weekend Essay (December 30) seems to suggest that effective altruism lacks a “moral metric”. I’m not sure that’s correct. Wasn’t it Anatole France who remarked that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids effective altruists and the rest of us alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread” — or something like that?
Whatever Sam Bankman-Fried was doing with other people’s money at FTX and whatever innocent intentions Sam Altman and OpenAI, the company he heads, have for their chatbots, it doesn’t remove their legal obligations.
Altruists will be just fine, if they follow the law.
James Meyer
Gurnee, IL, US
