If we sell the concept that “you’re serving your client the best by telling them to deploy the safest AIs”, then we’re steering money away from AI companies that choose to move away from safety research...
Hmm… whilst I wouldn’t completely rule out that theory of change given short-timelines (given the potential to get lucky), it doesn’t feel very reliable as a short-timelines plan. It feels more like a medium-long timelines play to me.
On the other hand: the lawyers that are representing people suing said companies for AI harms (e.g. Adam Raine’s parents) must and should be assisted by the community.
I’m pretty skeptical of this ToC. Suing labs pushes them towards a defensive, compliance mindset and away from focusing on, “How do we make sure that this AI actually remains safe as we scale up?”.
Lawyers working at Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google or Meta, are as compromised / able OR unable to influence things as AI engineers or technical staff at said companies.
This ToC certainly has its limits, but is much more likely to deliver value on short-timelines (not to mention that if folks decide to quit, then their frontier lab experience gives them a lot of policy credibility).
Suing labs pushes them towards a defensive, compliance mindset and away from focusing on, “How do we make sure that this AI actually remains safe as we scale up?”.
This sounds to me like a fully generalizable argument that we shouldn’t sue companies in general because this pushes them towards “defensive” goodharting to comply/[fit the regulation], whereas they are more likely to do actually good stuff in the absence of such suing (either because they focus on it deliberately (to some extent), or as a side effect of their default modus operandi).
I consider this a very inadequate way of orienting towards many large companies, but especially AGI-pushing labs.
It’s not “fully generalisable” because it is extremely contingent on safe AGI development being especially hard to standardise and courts having decades or even centuries less experience handling these issues than they have in other areas.
Or rather, you gave two justifications, but it still escapes me how you make an inferential step from them to “suing the labs will make them behave in a way that is less rational/competent/adequate, once/if they are in a position to build It”.
FYI (and maybe that is where a crux lies?) I don’t really think about it in terms of “regulation for AGI”, other than “let’s handicap/slow them down into oblivion and build legal structures around them such that, when ‘we’ are in a position to build It—and if want to build It—we actually have reasonable legal levers to pull to ensure that It results in good things”.
But even if I was thinking in terms of “regulation for AGI”, I find it hard to believe that they would do a decent enough job on their own in the absence of regulation/suing, such that legal action against them would be net-negative in expectation. At the very least, it sends the signal—to them and the World—“You guys don’t have your shit together with ‘minor’ non-existential issues like these; how the hell can we trust you with the fate of the civilization???”
I’m not expecting any significant effect here. They can afford better lawyers than you and absorb a significant amount of losses.
Not clear it is worth completing burning the AIS communities relationships with the labs (OpenAI might be an exception as that is arguably already burnt).
I find it hard to believe that they would do a decent enough job on their own in the absence of regulation/suing, such that legal action against them would be net-negative in expectation
Trade-off is increase in policy effectiveness from positive pressure (likely low given how poorly understood the issue is) minus increase in defensiveness (likely high if we go hard here).
This balance works out different from other issues.
They can afford better lawyers than you and absorb a significant amount of losses.
I imagine Bill Gates can afford the best lawyers (and PR experts and whatever) ever, but somehow still, Warren Buffett decided to defund the Gates Foundation in the aftermath of the revelation of Gates’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein (whatever exactly that relationship involved and how adequate the public perception of it is … doesn’t matter here).
Better lawyers and stuff can help you twist the perception of what is true and right in your favor to a point. The relevant sort of “point” here is determined by a combination of common knowledge of the irresponsibility of the companies, their ambitions, their lack of “virtue” (collective and of their leaderships), and a bunch of other stuff.
I don’t expect several lawsuits won against a particular AGI lab to pump enough money out of them to handicap them. But the lawsuits are part of a larger portfolio trying to hit as many points of intervention as possible, and the relevant damage here is reputational, rather than monetary.
The model that doesn’t expect any significant effect from people bringing attention to the issue in various ways is the model that would have anti-predicted Bernie Sanders starting to advocate for banning data centers after talking to Eliezer and the crowd.
Not clear it is worth completing burning the AIS communities relationships with the labs
Counterfactually speaking, I am genuinely uncertain about the aggregate amount of good and bad that has resulted from “AIS communities” trying to have good relationships with the labs. And when I say “genuinely uncertain”, I mean “genuinely uncertain”, and in particular, it seems quite likely that it has been close to a wash.
Also, insofar as suing labs for reasons that are absolutely legit — both legally and ethically — is going to “damage the relationships”, this seems like evidence that the lab doesn’t care that much about the Good, and the additional [levers to influence the company] gained by “having people there” are slim at best, and thus the “relationship” probably isn’t worth saving.
ETA: Alex Turner’s post from yesterday is emblematic of how little influence even “top tier” AI safety people employed at an AI lab can expect to have over the lab’s decisions.
Relevant damage here is reputational, rather than monetary
Okay, that’s interesting, and a good point. That said, given decreasing marginal returns, I expect such reputational interventions to be less effective than you might think (only a proportion of the reputational loss will actually be counterfactual to how things would have played out anyway, maybe it’ll happen slightly faster).
Also, insofar as suing labs for reasons that are absolutely legit — both legally and ethically — is going to “damage the relationships”, this seems like evidence that the lab doesn’t care that much about the Good
Not necessarily. If we’re really doing it to make traction on larger-scale issues distinct from the actual lawsuit, it’s quite understandable why folks at the labs might consider these to be ‘bad faith’. I would even be tempted to make a virtue ethics argument against this.
Alex Turner’s post from yesterday is emblematic of how little influence even “top tier” AI safety people employed at an AI lab can expect to have over the lab’s decisions.
Disagree. It just showed that the US government is even more powerful.
Not clear it is worth completing burning the AIS communities relationships with the labs (OpenAI might be an exception as that is arguably already burnt).
I honestly wonder if there are AI Safety researchers working at Frontier labs that would end their relationships with orgs that support litigators with forensic evidence / expert witnesses. I note that Anthropic’s ongoing suits are in relation to IP and copyright- I would understand AIS researchers not wanting to get involved here at all.
OpenAI and Character.AI have the largest count of s*uicide and AI Spiralism / AI Psychosis related suits (Google has the Gavalascase). Whether or not you think this helps the x-risk agenda, I do not believe is responsible to “look away” when people are dying.
And, from personal experience, these cases (Raine, Sewell/Garcia) have enabled productive conversations with policy-makers (you can research “harmful manipulation, EU AI Act” and hopefully see the importance of this cases in policy, but I suspect you’d be more open if you hear it from a policy org).
Also: I am aware that there are members of this community that work at OpenAI (even if “already burnt”) and do try their best to do the right thing. Their legal team’s litigation practices have been questionable, but I agree it’s important to care for relationships with aligned individuals- I admire those people at Labs who have taken a stance.
I am more of a mid-termist, which I should have said more clearly. I am also looking at it from a less US-centric perspective than usual...
The lawsuits are already happening: https://ailawsuittracker.com/companies/ and unfortunately, are the only way for people to get any redress. So, I cannot (in good conscience) treat these cases as “collateral damage” in favour of focusing on short timelines. Also consider how much of a conversation opener it has been for policy orgs that they can point at real incidents, such as the Adam Raine case, when defending why we need stronger regulation of AI and AI companies.
I do agree that folk that work at Labs for a while and resign have better chances / legibility in the future.
I imagine that seeing progress in these cases and the future of them being unfavourable for the AI companies is also pretty impactful for investors—which seems to be important for the AI companies, or they wouldnt be trying to IPO and raise more money.
We can also see that its important to the AI companies, because they’re spending money and time in lobbying and in fighting these cases, rather than just agreeing to a settlement and agreeing that the harm happened.
We shouldn’t assume that “unfavourable for the AI companies” automatically means that it is good for the world or that they won’t just eat the lawsuits.
We can look at their current and trending behaviour from the past to make predictions.
If you’d like to make a concrete prediction that we both agree counts as an AI company ‘eating a lawsuit’ within the next 6 months, happy to make a bet.
Hmm… whilst I wouldn’t completely rule out that theory of change given short-timelines (given the potential to get lucky), it doesn’t feel very reliable as a short-timelines plan. It feels more like a medium-long timelines play to me.
I’m pretty skeptical of this ToC. Suing labs pushes them towards a defensive, compliance mindset and away from focusing on, “How do we make sure that this AI actually remains safe as we scale up?”.
This ToC certainly has its limits, but is much more likely to deliver value on short-timelines (not to mention that if folks decide to quit, then their frontier lab experience gives them a lot of policy credibility).
This sounds to me like a fully generalizable argument that we shouldn’t sue companies in general because this pushes them towards “defensive” goodharting to comply/[fit the regulation], whereas they are more likely to do actually good stuff in the absence of such suing (either because they focus on it deliberately (to some extent), or as a side effect of their default modus operandi).
I consider this a very inadequate way of orienting towards many large companies, but especially AGI-pushing labs.
It’s not “fully generalisable” because it is extremely contingent on safe AGI development being especially hard to standardise and courts having decades or even centuries less experience handling these issues than they have in other areas.
I don’t understand why you think suing the labs makes them less likely to do something reasonable with regard to that.
Labs also have zero experience handling safe AGI development.
Responding directly to these questions might take us too into the weeds. Do you understand why my argument isn’t fully generalisable?
No. I don’t understand.
Or rather, you gave two justifications, but it still escapes me how you make an inferential step from them to “suing the labs will make them behave in a way that is less rational/competent/adequate, once/if they are in a position to build It”.
FYI (and maybe that is where a crux lies?) I don’t really think about it in terms of “regulation for AGI”, other than “let’s handicap/slow them down into oblivion and build legal structures around them such that, when ‘we’ are in a position to build It—and if want to build It—we actually have reasonable legal levers to pull to ensure that It results in good things”.
But even if I was thinking in terms of “regulation for AGI”, I find it hard to believe that they would do a decent enough job on their own in the absence of regulation/suing, such that legal action against them would be net-negative in expectation. At the very least, it sends the signal—to them and the World—“You guys don’t have your shit together with ‘minor’ non-existential issues like these; how the hell can we trust you with the fate of the civilization???”
That’s prob. a crux.
I’m not expecting any significant effect here. They can afford better lawyers than you and absorb a significant amount of losses.
Not clear it is worth completing burning the AIS communities relationships with the labs (OpenAI might be an exception as that is arguably already burnt).
Trade-off is increase in policy effectiveness from positive pressure (likely low given how poorly understood the issue is) minus increase in defensiveness (likely high if we go hard here).
This balance works out different from other issues.
I imagine Bill Gates can afford the best lawyers (and PR experts and whatever) ever, but somehow still, Warren Buffett decided to defund the Gates Foundation in the aftermath of the revelation of Gates’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein (whatever exactly that relationship involved and how adequate the public perception of it is … doesn’t matter here).
Better lawyers and stuff can help you twist the perception of what is true and right in your favor to a point. The relevant sort of “point” here is determined by a combination of common knowledge of the irresponsibility of the companies, their ambitions, their lack of “virtue” (collective and of their leaderships), and a bunch of other stuff.
I don’t expect several lawsuits won against a particular AGI lab to pump enough money out of them to handicap them. But the lawsuits are part of a larger portfolio trying to hit as many points of intervention as possible, and the relevant damage here is reputational, rather than monetary.
The model that doesn’t expect any significant effect from people bringing attention to the issue in various ways is the model that would have anti-predicted Bernie Sanders starting to advocate for banning data centers after talking to Eliezer and the crowd.
Counterfactually speaking, I am genuinely uncertain about the aggregate amount of good and bad that has resulted from “AIS communities” trying to have good relationships with the labs. And when I say “genuinely uncertain”, I mean “genuinely uncertain”, and in particular, it seems quite likely that it has been close to a wash.
Also, insofar as suing labs for reasons that are absolutely legit — both legally and ethically — is going to “damage the relationships”, this seems like evidence that the lab doesn’t care that much about the Good, and the additional [levers to influence the company] gained by “having people there” are slim at best, and thus the “relationship” probably isn’t worth saving.
ETA: Alex Turner’s post from yesterday is emblematic of how little influence even “top tier” AI safety people employed at an AI lab can expect to have over the lab’s decisions.
Okay, that’s interesting, and a good point. That said, given decreasing marginal returns, I expect such reputational interventions to be less effective than you might think (only a proportion of the reputational loss will actually be counterfactual to how things would have played out anyway, maybe it’ll happen slightly faster).
Not necessarily. If we’re really doing it to make traction on larger-scale issues distinct from the actual lawsuit, it’s quite understandable why folks at the labs might consider these to be ‘bad faith’. I would even be tempted to make a virtue ethics argument against this.
Disagree. It just showed that the US government is even more powerful.
I honestly wonder if there are AI Safety researchers working at Frontier labs that would end their relationships with orgs that support litigators with forensic evidence / expert witnesses.
I note that Anthropic’s ongoing suits are in relation to IP and copyright- I would understand AIS researchers not wanting to get involved here at all.
OpenAI and Character.AI have the largest count of s*uicide and AI Spiralism / AI Psychosis related suits (Google has the Gavalas case). Whether or not you think this helps the x-risk agenda, I do not believe is responsible to “look away” when people are dying.
And, from personal experience, these cases (Raine, Sewell/Garcia) have enabled productive conversations with policy-makers (you can research “harmful manipulation, EU AI Act” and hopefully see the importance of this cases in policy, but I suspect you’d be more open if you hear it from a policy org).
Also: I am aware that there are members of this community that work at OpenAI (even if “already burnt”) and do try their best to do the right thing. Their legal team’s litigation practices have been questionable, but I agree it’s important to care for relationships with aligned individuals- I admire those people at Labs who have taken a stance.
I am more of a mid-termist, which I should have said more clearly. I am also looking at it from a less US-centric perspective than usual...
The lawsuits are already happening: https://ailawsuittracker.com/companies/ and unfortunately, are the only way for people to get any redress. So, I cannot (in good conscience) treat these cases as “collateral damage” in favour of focusing on short timelines. Also consider how much of a conversation opener it has been for policy orgs that they can point at real incidents, such as the Adam Raine case, when defending why we need stronger regulation of AI and AI companies.
I do agree that folk that work at Labs for a while and resign have better chances / legibility in the future.
I imagine that seeing progress in these cases and the future of them being unfavourable for the AI companies is also pretty impactful for investors—which seems to be important for the AI companies, or they wouldnt be trying to IPO and raise more money.
We can also see that its important to the AI companies, because they’re spending money and time in lobbying and in fighting these cases, rather than just agreeing to a settlement and agreeing that the harm happened.
We shouldn’t assume that “unfavourable for the AI companies” automatically means that it is good for the world or that they won’t just eat the lawsuits.
We can look at their current and trending behaviour from the past to make predictions.
If you’d like to make a concrete prediction that we both agree counts as an AI company ‘eating a lawsuit’ within the next 6 months, happy to make a bet.