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Yeah, but that's not the Drowning Child, is it? They charity-mugged everyone with that nugget from Singer: if you saw a child drowning right now, in front of your very own eyes, wouldn't you save it? What kind of heartless monster would not? And so if you accept that you should save the drowning child, then you must accept that you should save the children who will die without malaria nets.
I know the malaria nets projects have now got more money than they know what to do with, so it's not hypocritical for EA to move to a new good cause. But it is hypocritical to move to a cause where the advice now is "Forget about that drowning child, if you jump into the pond you might catch a cold and be home from work sick and then your contribution to stopping AI from paperclipping us all will be lost for that valuable period of a week! Sure, we don't know if the AI is coming in ten or fifty years, and the kid is drowning right now, but imagine all the kids in fifty years time instead!"
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