Action is better than inaction; but please stop and think of your theory of change for more than five minutes,
I think there’s a very reasonable theory of change—X-risk from AI needs to enter the Overton window. I see no justification here for going to the meta-level and claiming they did not think for 5 minutes, which is why I have weak downvoted in addition to strong disagree.
This tactic might not work, but I am not persuaded by your supposed downsides. The strikers should not risk their lives, but I don’t get the impression that they are. The movement does need people who are eating → working on AI safety research, governance, and other forms of advocacy. But why not this too? Seems very plausibly a comparative advantage for some concerned people, and particularly high leverage when very few are taking this step. If you think they should be doing something else instead, say specifically what it is and why these particular individuals are better suited to that particular task.
I see no justification here for going to the meta-level and claiming they did not think for 5 minutes
Michaël Trazzi’s comment, which he wrote a few hours before he started his hunger strike, isn’t directly about hunger striking but it does indicate to me that he put more than 5 minutes of thought into the decision, and his comment gestures at a theory of change.
I spoke to Michaël in person before he started. I told him I didn’t think the game theory worked out (if he’s not willing to die, GDM should ignore him; if he does die then he’s worsening the world, since he can definitely contribute better by being alive, and GDM should still ignore him). I don’t think he’s going to starve himself to death or serious harm, but that does make the threat empty. I don’t really think that matters too much on a game-theoretic-reputation method since nobody seems to be expecting him to do that.
His theory of change was basically “If I do this, other people might” which seems to be true: he did get another person involved. That other person has said they’ll do it for “1-3 weeks” which I would say is unambiguously not a threat to starve oneself to death.
As a publicity stunt it has kinda worked in the basic sense of getting publicity. I think it might change the texture and vibe of the AI protest movement in a direction I would prefer it to not go in. It certainly moves the salience-weighted average of public AI advocacy towards Stop AI-ish things.
As Mikhail said, I feel great empathy and respect for these people. My first instinct was similar to yours, though - if you’re not willing to die, it won’t work, and you probably shouldn’t be willing to die (because that also won’t work / there are more reliable ways to contribute / timelines uncertainty).
I think ‘I’m doing this to get others to join in’ is a pretty weak response to this rebuttal. If they’re also not willing to die, then it still won’t work, and if they are, you’ve wrangled them in at more risk than you’re willing to take on yourself, which is pretty bad (and again, it probably still won’t work even if a dozen people are willing to die on the steps of the DeepMind office, because the government will intervene, or they’ll be painted as loons, or the attention will never materialize and their ardor will wain).
I’m pretty confused about how, under any reasonable analysis, this could come out looking positive EV. Most of these extreme forms of protest just don’t work in America (e.g. the soldier who self-immolated a few years ago). And if it’s not intended to be extreme, they’ve (I presume accidentally) misbranded their actions.
Fair enough. I think these actions are +ev under a coarse grained model where some version of “Attention on AI risk” is the main currency (or a slight refinement to “Not-totally-hostile attention on AI risk”). For a domain like public opinion and comms, I think that deploying a set of simple heuristics like “Am I getting attention?” “Is that attention generally positive?” “Am I lying or doing something illegal?” can be pretty useful.
Michael said on twitter here that he’s had conversations with two sympathetic DeepMind employees, plus David Silver, who was also vaguely sympathetic. This itself is more +ev than I expected already, so I’m updating in favour of Michael here.
It’s also occurred to me that if any of the CEOs cracks and at least publicly responds the hunger strikers, then the CEOs who don’t do so will look villainous, so you actually only need to have one of them respond to get a wedge in.
To clarify, “think for five minutes” was an appeal to people who might want to do these kinds of things in the future, not a claim about Guido or Michael.
That said, I do in fact claim they have not thought carefully about their theory of change, and the linked comment from Michael lists very obvious surface-level reasons for why do this in front of anthropic and not openai; I really would not consider this on the level of demonstrating having thought carefully about the theory of change.
I think there’s a very reasonable theory of change—X-risk from AI needs to enter the Overton window
While in principle, as I mentioned, a hunger strike can bring attention, this is not an effective way to do this for the particular issue that AI will kill everyone by default. The diff to communicate isn’t “someone is really scared of AI ending the world”; it’s “scientists think AI might literally kill everyone and also here are the reasons why”.
claiming they did not think for 5 minutes
This was not a claim about these people but an appeal to potential future people to maybe do research on this stuff before making decisions like this one.
That said, I talked to Guido prior to the start of the hunger strike, tried to understand his logic, and was not convinced he had any kind of reasonable theory of change guiding his actions, and my understanding is that he perceives it as the proper action to take, in a situation like that, which is why I called this vibe-protesting.
I don’t get the impression that they are
(It’s not very clear what would be the conditions for them to stop the hunger strikes.)
But why not this too?
Hunger strikes can be very effective and powerful if executed wisely. My comment expresses my strong opinion that this did not happen here, not that it can’t happen in general.
I think there’s a very reasonable theory of change—X-risk from AI needs to enter the Overton window. I see no justification here for going to the meta-level and claiming they did not think for 5 minutes, which is why I have weak downvoted in addition to strong disagree.
This tactic might not work, but I am not persuaded by your supposed downsides. The strikers should not risk their lives, but I don’t get the impression that they are. The movement does need people who are eating → working on AI safety research, governance, and other forms of advocacy. But why not this too? Seems very plausibly a comparative advantage for some concerned people, and particularly high leverage when very few are taking this step. If you think they should be doing something else instead, say specifically what it is and why these particular individuals are better suited to that particular task.
Michaël Trazzi’s comment, which he wrote a few hours before he started his hunger strike, isn’t directly about hunger striking but it does indicate to me that he put more than 5 minutes of thought into the decision, and his comment gestures at a theory of change.
I spoke to Michaël in person before he started. I told him I didn’t think the game theory worked out (if he’s not willing to die, GDM should ignore him; if he does die then he’s worsening the world, since he can definitely contribute better by being alive, and GDM should still ignore him). I don’t think he’s going to starve himself to death or serious harm, but that does make the threat empty. I don’t really think that matters too much on a game-theoretic-reputation method since nobody seems to be expecting him to do that.
His theory of change was basically “If I do this, other people might” which seems to be true: he did get another person involved. That other person has said they’ll do it for “1-3 weeks” which I would say is unambiguously not a threat to starve oneself to death.
As a publicity stunt it has kinda worked in the basic sense of getting publicity. I think it might change the texture and vibe of the AI protest movement in a direction I would prefer it to not go in. It certainly moves the salience-weighted average of public AI advocacy towards Stop AI-ish things.
As Mikhail said, I feel great empathy and respect for these people. My first instinct was similar to yours, though - if you’re not willing to die, it won’t work, and you probably shouldn’t be willing to die (because that also won’t work / there are more reliable ways to contribute / timelines uncertainty).
I think ‘I’m doing this to get others to join in’ is a pretty weak response to this rebuttal. If they’re also not willing to die, then it still won’t work, and if they are, you’ve wrangled them in at more risk than you’re willing to take on yourself, which is pretty bad (and again, it probably still won’t work even if a dozen people are willing to die on the steps of the DeepMind office, because the government will intervene, or they’ll be painted as loons, or the attention will never materialize and their ardor will wain).
I’m pretty confused about how, under any reasonable analysis, this could come out looking positive EV. Most of these extreme forms of protest just don’t work in America (e.g. the soldier who self-immolated a few years ago). And if it’s not intended to be extreme, they’ve (I presume accidentally) misbranded their actions.
Fair enough. I think these actions are +ev under a coarse grained model where some version of “Attention on AI risk” is the main currency (or a slight refinement to “Not-totally-hostile attention on AI risk”). For a domain like public opinion and comms, I think that deploying a set of simple heuristics like “Am I getting attention?” “Is that attention generally positive?” “Am I lying or doing something illegal?” can be pretty useful.
Michael said on twitter here that he’s had conversations with two sympathetic DeepMind employees, plus David Silver, who was also vaguely sympathetic. This itself is more +ev than I expected already, so I’m updating in favour of Michael here.
It’s also occurred to me that if any of the CEOs cracks and at least publicly responds the hunger strikers, then the CEOs who don’t do so will look villainous, so you actually only need to have one of them respond to get a wedge in.
To clarify, “think for five minutes” was an appeal to people who might want to do these kinds of things in the future, not a claim about Guido or Michael.
That said, I do in fact claim they have not thought carefully about their theory of change, and the linked comment from Michael lists very obvious surface-level reasons for why do this in front of anthropic and not openai; I really would not consider this on the level of demonstrating having thought carefully about the theory of change.
While in principle, as I mentioned, a hunger strike can bring attention, this is not an effective way to do this for the particular issue that AI will kill everyone by default. The diff to communicate isn’t “someone is really scared of AI ending the world”; it’s “scientists think AI might literally kill everyone and also here are the reasons why”.
This was not a claim about these people but an appeal to potential future people to maybe do research on this stuff before making decisions like this one.
That said, I talked to Guido prior to the start of the hunger strike, tried to understand his logic, and was not convinced he had any kind of reasonable theory of change guiding his actions, and my understanding is that he perceives it as the proper action to take, in a situation like that, which is why I called this vibe-protesting.
(It’s not very clear what would be the conditions for them to stop the hunger strikes.)
Hunger strikes can be very effective and powerful if executed wisely. My comment expresses my strong opinion that this did not happen here, not that it can’t happen in general.