I’m pretty much fully in agreement with these ideas being the most important things to work on for concretely reducing existential risks from AI right now. I suspect it could be very helpful (for me, if no one else) to have some generally recognized central website (presumably called something like political-will.ai) for painting a clearer picture of this field of work, such as:
Keeping track of the progress that has been made so far (e.g. stuff like the AIPN tracker already listed, perhaps a timeline of important events)
What still needs to happen for international coordination (the Red Lines FAQ gives some loose ideas for this under “What should the next steps be?”, and perhaps historical examples drawn from how the IAEA or Montreal Protocol came to be).
What’s stopping these from happening (e.g. the idea that we need to beat China and/or not strangle innovation, the idea that there isn’t enough evidence to act yet)
What has and hasn’t worked to make progress, with examples (e.g. Concrete demonstrations of AI cyber risks such as Project Glasswing prompting the Trump administration toplace export controls onto Mythos when they had previously been extremely skeptical of regulating AI in any way. Perhaps transcripts of conversations that have changed decision-makers’ minds, to the extent that these are available).
The above information, but how it specifically applies to narrower policy asks, insofar as this is applicable (e.g. trying to answer the question of why DNA screening laws still haven’t passed despite it being far less costly and its risk being far more real-seeming than loss of control from AI, and what could probably help change this).
What other work could potentially help, and what the reader can do to contribute.
This information is mostly publicly available but very scattered, and I expect organizing it could help a lot with making pivoting to this work easier. I’m interested in trying to make this myself, and am open to help or feedback.
I think a website might be hard to build for such a preparadigmatic field. Also, quality is as important as quantity and might be difficult to capture with crude KPIs, but it is probably possible to write many new posts like the one above, each focused on examining a particular subdimension. But I think that a good website could probably integrate most of those dimensions.
Concretely, rather than one canonical site, I’d bet more on many focused posts, each examining one subdimension. I’ve added to my to-dos to publish a reading list at some point.
I’m pretty much fully in agreement with these ideas being the most important things to work on for concretely reducing existential risks from AI right now. I suspect it could be very helpful (for me, if no one else) to have some generally recognized central website (presumably called something like political-will.ai) for painting a clearer picture of this field of work, such as:
Keeping track of the progress that has been made so far (e.g. stuff like the AIPN tracker already listed, perhaps a timeline of important events)
What still needs to happen for international coordination (the Red Lines FAQ gives some loose ideas for this under “What should the next steps be?”, and perhaps historical examples drawn from how the IAEA or Montreal Protocol came to be).
What’s stopping these from happening (e.g. the idea that we need to beat China and/or not strangle innovation, the idea that there isn’t enough evidence to act yet)
What has and hasn’t worked to make progress, with examples (e.g. Concrete demonstrations of AI cyber risks such as Project Glasswing prompting the Trump administration to place export controls onto Mythos when they had previously been extremely skeptical of regulating AI in any way. Perhaps transcripts of conversations that have changed decision-makers’ minds, to the extent that these are available).
The above information, but how it specifically applies to narrower policy asks, insofar as this is applicable (e.g. trying to answer the question of why DNA screening laws still haven’t passed despite it being far less costly and its risk being far more real-seeming than loss of control from AI, and what could probably help change this).
What other work could potentially help, and what the reader can do to contribute.
This information is mostly publicly available but very scattered, and I expect organizing it could help a lot with making pivoting to this work easier. I’m interested in trying to make this myself, and am open to help or feedback.
Thanks for this and for the list of questions!
I think a website might be hard to build for such a preparadigmatic field. Also, quality is as important as quantity and might be difficult to capture with crude KPIs, but it is probably possible to write many new posts like the one above, each focused on examining a particular subdimension. But I think that a good website could probably integrate most of those dimensions.
Concretely, rather than one canonical site, I’d bet more on many focused posts, each examining one subdimension. I’ve added to my to-dos to publish a reading list at some point.
Happy to give feedback if you draft a one-pager