I also think that AI safety is in a much worse position today than it would have been if it’d taken a more principled truth-seeking stance a decade ago (for example, AI governance would have been less likely to throw in with the Democrats in a way that alienated MAGA). Indeed, with respect to engaging with the current administration, it seems like standard EA views are more of a liability than any of the things you mentioned by a significant margin, and I expect that having a right-winger at Resolution would be a net gain in political capital.
I’d want to argue that this is in fact not the case, and AI safety is in fact in a reasonably good (though not perfect) position now, and a lot of this is because we do have bipartisan AI safety bills that basically every faction from Democrats to MAGA can agree on like the FRONTIER act by Trahan and Olbernolte, and Trump is sufficiently scared by Mythos that he has started to restrict AI capabilities (unfortunately they’ve generally targeted external deployment, which is a poor choice because in the worlds where it matters, the alignment problem is much more likely to be solved by default)
I do believe that AI safety will become partisan by 2028 (assuming AI capabilities mostly continue on their growth trajectory), but the reason for this is because AI issues will have higher salience, and for a multitude of reasons relating to the U.S political system’s brokenness (especially the fact that multi-partyism/coalition governments aren’t supported, and European-style parties are illegal in large part due to primaries) combined with social issues mattering more than economic issues to Americans, it will inevitably become partisan regardless of what the rationalist/EA communities actually did, so long as it’s high-salience enough.
Which implies a very different strategy to avoid polarization ruining AI safety, in that you want to delay political salience of AI issues, and make more use of Secret Congress to pass useful AI safety bills.
Or in Anton Leicht’s words, the workable strategies are to either ride the dragon on salience, borrowing some time for AI issues to make them low-salience deliberately, or use compromise carrots and populist sticks for policies.
Maybe more generally, one frame that I notice in your footnotes that’s wrong is that rationalists/EAs could have avoided polarization via individual choices, whereas the more correct view is to say that this had much less impact than it seems, and that there are higher-level causes of the polarization that is not worth their time to deal with (because it’s not neglected as an issue, and other actors have a comparative advantage in solving the issue).
I’d want to argue that this is in fact not the case, and AI safety is in fact in a reasonably good (though not perfect) position now, and a lot of this is because we do have bipartisan AI safety bills that basically every faction from Democrats to MAGA can agree on like the FRONTIER act by Trahan and Olbernolte, and Trump is sufficiently scared by Mythos that he has started to restrict AI capabilities (unfortunately they’ve generally targeted external deployment, which is a poor choice because in the worlds where it matters, the alignment problem is much more likely to be solved by default)
I do believe that AI safety will become partisan by 2028 (assuming AI capabilities mostly continue on their growth trajectory), but the reason for this is because AI issues will have higher salience, and for a multitude of reasons relating to the U.S political system’s brokenness (especially the fact that multi-partyism/coalition governments aren’t supported, and European-style parties are illegal in large part due to primaries) combined with social issues mattering more than economic issues to Americans, it will inevitably become partisan regardless of what the rationalist/EA communities actually did, so long as it’s high-salience enough.
Which implies a very different strategy to avoid polarization ruining AI safety, in that you want to delay political salience of AI issues, and make more use of Secret Congress to pass useful AI safety bills.
Or in Anton Leicht’s words, the workable strategies are to either ride the dragon on salience, borrowing some time for AI issues to make them low-salience deliberately, or use compromise carrots and populist sticks for policies.
Maybe more generally, one frame that I notice in your footnotes that’s wrong is that rationalists/EAs could have avoided polarization via individual choices, whereas the more correct view is to say that this had much less impact than it seems, and that there are higher-level causes of the polarization that is not worth their time to deal with (because it’s not neglected as an issue, and other actors have a comparative advantage in solving the issue).