This is a more promising strategy if your timelines are longer, because national governments are more likely to be both, developing AGI themselves and generally interested in AGI policy.
I am not quite sure why you think this is true. I kind of expect national governments to still be slow lumbering and stupid in 2040.
Sure governments have a lot of resources. What they lack is the smarts to effectively turn those resources into anything. So maybe some people in government think AI is a thing, others think it’s still mostly hype. The government crafts a bill. Half the money goes to artists put out of work by stable diffusion. A big section details insurance liability regulations for self driving cars. Some more funding is sent to various universities. A committee is formed. This doesn’t change the strategic picture much.
I guess I’m a bit less optimistic on the ability of governments to allocate funds efficiently, but I’m not very confident in that.
A fairly dumb-but-efficient strategy that I’d expect some governments to take is “give more money to SOTA orgs” or “give some core roles to SOTA orgs in your Manhattan Project”. That seems likely to me and that would have substantial effects.
They may well have some results. Dumping money on SOTA orgs just bumps compute a little higher. (and maybe data, if you are hiring lots of people to make data.)
It isn’t clear why SOTA orgs would want to be in a govmnt Manhatten project. It also isn’t clear if any modern government retains the competence to run one.
I don’t expect governments to do either of these. You generated those strategies by sampling “dumb but effective” strategies. I tried to sample from “most of the discussion got massively side tracked into the same old political squabbles and distractions.”
The idea that EVERY governments are dumb and won’t figure out a way which is not too bad to allocate their resources into AGI seems highly unlikely to me. There seems to be many mechanisms by which it could not be the case (e.g national defense is highly involved and is a bit more competent, the strategy is designed in collaboration with some competent people from the private sector etc.).
To be more precise, I’d be surprised if no one of these 7 countries had an ambitious plan which meaningfully changed the strategic landscape post-2030:
I am not quite sure why you think this is true. I kind of expect national governments to still be slow lumbering and stupid in 2040.
Mostly because they have a lot of resources and thus can weigh a lot in the race once they enter it.
Sure governments have a lot of resources. What they lack is the smarts to effectively turn those resources into anything. So maybe some people in government think AI is a thing, others think it’s still mostly hype. The government crafts a bill. Half the money goes to artists put out of work by stable diffusion. A big section details insurance liability regulations for self driving cars. Some more funding is sent to various universities. A committee is formed. This doesn’t change the strategic picture much.
I guess I’m a bit less optimistic on the ability of governments to allocate funds efficiently, but I’m not very confident in that.
A fairly dumb-but-efficient strategy that I’d expect some governments to take is “give more money to SOTA orgs” or “give some core roles to SOTA orgs in your Manhattan Project”. That seems likely to me and that would have substantial effects.
They may well have some results. Dumping money on SOTA orgs just bumps compute a little higher. (and maybe data, if you are hiring lots of people to make data.)
It isn’t clear why SOTA orgs would want to be in a govmnt Manhatten project. It also isn’t clear if any modern government retains the competence to run one.
I don’t expect governments to do either of these. You generated those strategies by sampling “dumb but effective” strategies. I tried to sample from “most of the discussion got massively side tracked into the same old political squabbles and distractions.”
The idea that EVERY governments are dumb and won’t figure out a way which is not too bad to allocate their resources into AGI seems highly unlikely to me. There seems to be many mechanisms by which it could not be the case (e.g national defense is highly involved and is a bit more competent, the strategy is designed in collaboration with some competent people from the private sector etc.).
To be more precise, I’d be surprised if no one of these 7 countries had an ambitious plan which meaningfully changed the strategic landscape post-2030:
US
Israel
UK
Singapore
France
China
Germany